Research Guides: Art: Images & Multimedia

ArtSTOR Image Database

ARTstor Digital Library is held within JSTOR article database. It provides more than one million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences with accessible suite of software tools for teaching and research. The collections comprise contributions from outstanding international museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates. NOTE: You will need to register with JSTOR if you wish to download images or create image groups.

U.S. and International Museums - Online Collections

African American Museum in Philadelphia The African American Museum in Philadelphia is the first institution built by a major United States city to house and interpret the life and work of African Americans.
Barnes Foundation The Barnes Foundation houses one of the finest collections of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French painting in the world. An extraordinary number of masterpieces by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse provide a depth of work by these artists that is unavailable elsewhere. Established as an educational institution, the Barnes carries out its mission teaching classes in its galleries and Arboretum.
Belvedere Museum (Vienna, Austria) 18,600 works covering 900 years of art history. Highlights of the collection include works from the Middle Ages, the Austrian Baroque and Viennese Biedermeier, and the period in Vienna from around 1900, complemented by works by Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh with an additional focus on the 20th and 21st century.
The British Museum Collections "The British Museum is unique in bringing together under one roof the cultures of the world, spanning continents and oceans. No other museum is responsible for collections of the same depth and breadth, beauty and significance. Its eight million objects allow us to explore the extraordinary diversity of human cultures, from small communities to vast empires, to discover the many forms and expressions human beings have given to every aspect of life, and to realise how closely they are interconnected."
California African American Museum For over thirty years, CAAM has been at the vanguard of museums dedicated exclusively to acquiring works created by African, Diasporic, and African American artists. Our collection is the largest of its kind in the western United States.
Cooper-Hewitt/Smithsonian Design Museum Online Collections This collection spans thirty centuries of historic and contemporary design,
Czartoryski Palace Museum The most valuable collection in Poland, and one of the most valuable ones in Europe. The Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci or the Landscape with the Good Samaritan by Rembrandt van Rijn, as well as many other masterpieces of not only painting, but also sculpture, crafts, military, applied arts, can be viewed in 26 exhibition halls, on two floors of the renovated Palace of the Princes Czartoryski Museum.
Frick Collection Henry Frick once resided in this 18th-century French-style mansion; now its the home of his impressive art collection, which includes Titian, Vermeer, Rembrandt, El Greco, Goya, Whistler and more.
Galleria Doria Pamphilj The Galleria Doria Pamphilj collection was started by Pope Innocent X Pamphilj in 1644. It currently consists of over 400 paintings dating from the 15th to the 18th century.
Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia (Venice, Italy)
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The largest collection of Venetian paintings in the world.
Guggenheim Museum
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Featuring over 1,700 artworks by more than 625 artists, the Collection Online presents a searchable database of selected artworks from the Guggenheim’s permanent collection of approximately 8,000 artworks. The selection reflects the breadth, diversity, and tenor of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s extensive holdings from the late 19th century through the present day. The Collection Online is continually expanded to include a larger representation of the museum’s core holdings as well as recent acquisitions.

In addition to highlights from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Collection Online includes works from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Browse by artist, date, medium, movement, and venue, or by several of the major groups of acquisitions that have entered the holdings of the foundation since its inception in 1937.
J. Paul Getty Museum Online Collections The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center in Los Angeles houses European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and photography from its beginnings to the present, gathered internationally.
Kyoto National Museum Online Collections The database provides over 10,000 images of over 5,000 objects or sets of objects from the musem collections: Buddhist Paintings, Illustrated Handscrolls, Portraiture, Medieval Ink Paintings, Momoyama-Edo paintings, Chinese Paintings, Calligraphy, Metalwork, Lacquerware, Textiles and Costumes, Ceramics, Archaeological Relics, Sculpture
Los Angeles Country Museum of Art (LACMA) Online Collections LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States, with a collection of more than 142,000 objects that illuminate 6,000 years of artistic expression across the globe. Committed to showcasing a multitude of art histories, LACMA exhibits and interprets works of art from new and unexpected points of view that are informed by the region’s rich cultural heritage and diverse population.
The Louvre Online Collections Formerly a royal palace, the Louvre has embraced the history of France for eight centuries. Intended as a universal museum since its inception in 1793, its collections—among the finest in the world—span several thousands of years and a territory that extends from America to the confines of Asia. Divided among eight departments, these collections feature works admired throughout the globe, including the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and the Venus de Milo. With nearly ten million visitors in 2012, the Louvre is the world’s most visited museum.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Online Collection The Met was founded in 1870 and his build a collection to represent more than 5,000 years of art from across the globe—from the first cities of the ancient world to the works of our time.
Musee Picasso-Paris The Musée Picasso Paris collection comprises over 5,000 works and tens of thousands of archived pieces. For its quality and scope as well as the range of art forms it encompasses, this collection is the only one in the world to present both Picasso’s complete painted, sculpted, engraved and illustrated œuvre and a precise record—through sketches, studies, drafts, notebooks, etchings in various stages, photographs, illustrated books, films and documents—of the artist’s creative process
Museum of Art & Design Online Collection The Museum of Arts and Design, based in Manhattan, New York City, collects, displays, and interprets objects that document contemporary and historic innovation in craft, art, and design.
Musée d'Orsay Online Collections The national museum of the Musée d'Orsay opened to the public on 9 December 1986 to show the great diversity of artistic creation in the western world between 1848 and 1914. Objects include painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, art objects, and graphic arts.
National Gallery of Art Online Collections The U.S. National Gallery of Art houses a collection of more than 150,000 paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, photographs, prints, and drawings. It spans the history of Western art and showcases some of the triumphs of human creativity.
Neue Galerie, New York The collection of Neue Galerie New York covers a range of media, including painting, sculpture, works on paper, decorative arts, and photographs created in Austria and Germany between 1890 and 1940. The extended Neue Galerie collection is comprised of works belonging to Ronald S. Lauder, to the Estate of Serge Sabarsky, and to the museum itself. The artworks currently catalogued on this website represent the holdings of the museum only. The Austrian material emphasizes the special relationship that existed in Vienna circa 1900 between the fine and decorative arts. Major artists in the field of fine arts include Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Alfred Kubin, and Richard Gerstl. Decorative arts include the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops) and the designs of such well-known figures as Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, and Dagobert Peche. The architects Adolf Loos and Otto Wagner are also represented. The collection of German art focuses on important movements of the early twentieth century. Max Beckmann, as well as Expressionist artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde, receive special attention. The Bauhaus is well represented, with strength in the area of decorative arts. Artists of note who were affiliated with the Bauhaus include Theodor Bogler, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, László Moholy-Nagy, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Oskar Schlemmer, and Wilhelm Wagenfeld. Holdings of Neue Sachlichkeit material include both well-known and less familiar artists, including Albert Birkle, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Karl Hubbuch, Felix Nussbaum, and Georg Scholz.
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. It was established by Act of Congress in 2003, following decades of efforts to promote and highlight the contributions of African Americans. To date, the Museum has collected more than 36,000 artifacts and nearly 100,000 individuals have become members.
Smithsonian Open Access Images
Uffizi Galleries Online Collections The Uffizi Galleries first brought together three extraordinary museum complexes in 2014. Together, these three structures contain the core of the collections of art, precious artisan-made objects, books, and plants belonging to the Medici, Habsburg-Lorraine and Savoy families. It is a stunning collection of treasures dating from Antiquity to the 20th century, and over the years, it has contributed to the fame of the Uffizi, Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens.
Vatican Museum Online Collections & Tours Mission: To present, preserve and share that extraordinary legacy of culture, history, and beauty that the Roman Pontiffs have collected and preserved for centuries. The Vatican Museums have an immense collection of art in multiple disciplines and from various eras and culture.
Victoria & Albert Museum Online Collections The V&A is the world’s leading museum of art and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.3 million objects that span over 5,000 years of human creativity. The Museum holds many of the UK's national collections and houses some of the greatest resources for the study of architecture, furniture, fashion, textiles, photography, sculpture, painting, jewellery, glass, ceramics, book arts, Asian art and design, theatre and performance.
Zeitz MOCAA Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) is a public not-for-profit contemporary art museum which collects, preserves, researches, and exhibits twenty-first century art from Africa and its Diaspora; hosts international exhibitions; develops supporting educational and enrichment programmes; encourages intercultural understanding; and guarantees access for all. Over one hundred galleries, spread over nine floors, are dedicated to a large cutting edge permanent collection; temporary exhibitions; and Centres for Art Education, Curatorial Excellence, Performative Practice, Photography, the Moving Image, and the Costume Institute.

Google Arts & Culture

Google Art Partner Museum Collections "Google Arts & Culture is a non-profit initiative. We work with cultural institutions and artists around the world. Together, our mission is to preserve and bring the world’s art and culture online so it’s accessible to anyone, anywhere."

Virtual Walk-Through Museum Tours

British Museum Virtual walkthrough via Google Maps
Dali' Museum, Florida Scroll to bottom of page, select virtual tour.
Dali' Theatre Museum, Barcelona
The J. Paul Getty Museum Click on the "human" icon for the virtual tour.
Le Gallerie delle Uffizi, Firenze Click on the yellow "human" icon for the virtual tour.
The Louvre, Paris Scroll down, select virtual tour.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC Click on the yellow "human" icon for the virtual tour.
Musee Dorsay, Paris Virtual Tour Click on the "human" icon for the virtual tour, and the "explore" button for an interactive timeline of history.
Museo Frida Kahlo Click on yellow "human" icon for virtual tour.
Museo Reina Sofia Scroll down & select tour by clicking on the yellow "human" icon for the virtual tour.
Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand Click on the yellow "human" icon for the virtual tour.
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Click on the yellow "human" icon for the virtual tour.
National Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art, Korea Click on the "human" icon for the virtual tour.
The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Click on the yellow "human" icon for the virtual tour.
The State Hermitage Museum, Russia
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Click on the "human" icon for the virtual tour.
The Vatican Museums, Rome

Streaming Video Resources

Academic Video Online (AVON) This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive video subscription.
Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Online videos on a variety of topics.
Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Kanopy Streaming Videos
Swank This link opens in a new window
Online Video Collection

Educationl Video Streams - Highlighted Titles

Perspective
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In this program, artists Ben Johnson and Patrick Hughes travel to Florence, where 15th-century painter Piero della Francesca first employed mathematically based perspective. Tracing the use of perspective, they discuss how artists at the beginning of the 20th century rebelled against its limitations. Johnson then uses a computer to create a perfect perspective model for a planned painting, while Hughes completely subverts the rules of perspective in creating his own work. (30 minutes)

Art: Images & Multimedia