Subject Guides: Art & Architectural History: Image Databases

Image Citation + Copyright Assessment

No matter where you get your image (Google image search, ARTstor, museum website, scan from a book) or how you use it (Power Point, in a paper for class, a flyer), you MUST provide a citation for every image you use. This is as simple as adding the URL to the bottom of the digital image. See the Using Images guide for more detailed information.

Make sure to provide as much information as possible, including:

Title
Author or Creator name
Repository information (museum, library, or other owning institution)
Image source (database, website, book, postcard, vendor, etc.)
Date accessed

If you are using a specific citation for a paper, e.g. MLA, APA, Chicago Style, the formatting for citing images can be adjusted to each style.

Use the sources below to help you cite images or determine copyright:

Citation Help & Academic Honesty
How to cite using MLA, APA, & Chicago, plus links to other citation styles. Information on how to avoid problems with plagiarism.
Digital Image Rights Computator (DIRC)
An easy step by step guide to assessing the intellectual property status of an image and how exactly you may use the image as a student or faculty. Brought to you by the Visual Resources Association.
Copyright Digital Slider
A useful and very usable tool to answer the ever burning question "Is it protected by copyright?" [in the United States only] Courtesy of the American Library Association (ALA)

Image Databases

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
Database of over one million digital images encompassing architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts and material culture. Save and share images, cite images easily for research, and create personal collections and presentations using OIV (Offline Image Viewer) or PowerPoint. Search the local Visual Resource Collection (VRC). For assistance, contact Marcia Focht, Curator of Visual Resources at mfocht@binghamton.edu or 607-777-2215.
For more detailed information about ARTstor's collections, see What's in ARTstor. Note: This resource will return the number of hits if it is fewer than 200. Otherwise, it will report 'Hits were found'. In either case, a link to results is provided.
Index of Medieval Art This link opens in a new window
Covers art from the Early Christian period to the 16th century, focusing on iconographic documentation in both text and image. Works of art span 17 media, ranging from manuscripts, painting and glassworks.

Visual Arts Data Service (UK)
VADS is the online resource for visual arts. It has provided services to the academic community for 12 years and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections comprising over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK.
Openverse
An extensive content library containing stock photos and images
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The search engines under this portal do not guarantee CC licensing, although many do. Always verify that the work is actually under a CC license to determine your use of media or images.
Google Art Project
An aggregate of 151 art collections from museums around the world set in a dynamic user friendly platform. View or create shared personal collections for research and inspiration.
Artsy
A contemporary art marketplace with image database
Rembrandt Database
A research database which provides substantive and scholarly documentation on Rembrandt's works, including historical and technical information and conservation history.
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The Rembrandt Database is a joint initiative of the RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History) and the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Institutional Image Collections + Open Access Images

Art Institute of Chicago Digital Collection
High-resolution images of art from the famed museum.
British Library Digital Collections
This online gallery contains over 30,000 images from the British Library's collection.
The British Museum Online Collection
With more than 2 million records, the database is based on the British Museum's collection management tool. Utilizes specialised terms, abbreviations and shorthand.
Calisphere
University of California's free public gateway to digitized items including photographs, documents, political cartoons, and other unique cultural artifacts.
Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access Images
30,000 high-res images of public-domain artworks in the CMA collection, plus metadata relevant to more than 61,000 works are available without restriction, whether the works themselves are in the public domain or under copyright.
Discover Artworks--Art U.K.
Allows searching of over 250,000 artworks from Britain's national collections.
Europeana
Europeana is a single access point to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout Europe.
Fashion History Timeline
A project by Fashion Institute of Technology's History of Art Department. The Timeline offers scholarly contributions to the public knowledge of the history of fashion and design.
Getty's Open Content Database
The Getty makes available, without charge, all available digital images to which the Getty holds the rights or that are in the public domain to be used for any purpose. No permission is required. Read more about this initiative here: http://www.getty.edu/about/opencontent.html
Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record / Historic American Landscaping Survey
Recording America's built environment in multiformat surveys comprising more than 581,000 measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories for more than 43,000 historic structures and sites dating from Pre-Columbian times to the twentieth century.
LACMA Collections
LACMA offers 20,000 high-quality unrestricted images of art from their collection, and are available for everyone to download and use freely.
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalogue
The PPOC Collection offers over 1.2 million digitized images, drawn from primarily American history, including photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History
Images of art and design throughout history, presented in timeline format.
Museum of Modern Art
Browse or search the MoMA collections.
Musée du Louvre Database of Exhibits
The database covers all the works exhibited in the museum, some 30,000 items. Internet users, like museum visitors, will find the usual explanatory texts that accompany museum exhibits, compiled under the authority of the museum curators.
NGA Images, National Gallery of Art
NGA Images is a repository of open access digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. 29,000 images are available for non-commercial use.
NYPL Digital Library
Access to hundreds of thousands of images crossing many disciplines with an emphasis on manuscripts, posters, prints and photographs.
Rijksmuseum
125,000 high resolution digital images free to use and manipulate.
Smithsonian Archives of American Art Image Gallery
The image gallery contains over 8,000 photographs, letters, sketches, diaries, and other documents which have been scanned and individually described. Small resolution images are available without watermark for educational use.
Smithsonian Open Access
Download, share, and reuse nearly 3 million 2D and 3D digital items from the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.
Victoria & Albert Museum Image Collections
Search over 1 million image and object records relating to objects in the Victoria & Albert collections.
Yale Digital Commons
Search 1.5 million records in the areas of art, natural history, books, and maps, photographs, audio, video, and materials specific to the University in Yale's digital collection. Access is free.

CAA Standards and Guidelines--Intellectual Property
Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find listings of institutional image banks in the United States and elsewhere.