Resource Guides: Art: Resources

Key Databases

Articles and scholarly works

Art and Architecture Complete
Cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 630 academic journals, magazines and trade publications with full text for over 240 periodicals and 140 books, as well as selective coverage for over 50 publications.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index
Covers the Arts, Humanities, Language (including Linguistics), Poetry, Music, Classical works, History, Oriental Studies, Philosophy, Archaeology, Architecture, Religion, Television, Theater, and Radio with abstracting and indexing for more than 1,700 journals.
JSTOR
Provides access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.

Media

Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) & Répertoire international de la littérature de l'art (RILA)
BHA on the Getty Web site offers both basic and advanced search modules, and can be searched easily by subject, artist, author, article or journal title, and other elements. Citations encompass fine arts—painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, architecture—as well as decorative and applied arts—crafts, graphic arts, and folk and popular art among them.

Art and Architecture in Video
Streaming documentaries and interviews illustrating the history, theory and practice of art, design and architecture.

Reference works

Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms
Covers a wide range of terms from the visual art world, including materials, techniques, and important styles and periods.
Oxford Art Online
Reference resource for all aspects of the visual arts worldwide from prehistory to the present day. Provides web access to the entire text of The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (1996, 34 vols.) and The Oxford Companion to Western Art, ed. Hugh Brigstocke (2001).
Grove Art Online
Reference resource for all aspects of the visual arts worldwide from prehistory to the present day. Provides web access to the entire text of The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (1996, 34 vols.) and The Oxford Companion to Western Art, ed. Hugh Brigstocke (2001).

Also Try

Open Access Journals

Journal of Art Historiography
Out of the University of Birmingham, a free, open access electronic journal for study and practice of art historical writing. Topics include archaeology, anthropology, ethnography, as well visual studies and traditional art history.
Nonsite.org
An online peer-reviewed quarterly journal of scholarship in the humanities and visual arts, focused on theoretical frameworks for thinking about culture.
Body, Space, and Technology Journal
A multimedia, peer-reviewed journal on intersections of technology and the arts.
International Journal of Design
Peer-reviewed, open access journal published in Taiwan on professional and scholarly topics in art & design.
Art History Pedagogy & Practice
Art History Pedagogy & Practice is a peer-reviewed open access e-journal devoted to scholarship of teaching and learning in art history

Finding Contemporary Artists

BOMB Magazine
A quarterly magazine for contemporary arts criticism (NYC-based). Includes reviews, interviews, artist profiles/portfolios, and more.
NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art
Journal of contemporary African and African Diaspora art. Includes scholarly articles, reviews (exhibits and books), interviews, and roundtable discussions.
October
Contemporary art criticism and theory journal from MIT Press.
Studio Magazine
A biannual magazine of contemporary arts criticism from Studio Museum Harlem.
X-TRA Online
An LA-based quarterly contemporary arts journal, from Project X Foundation for Art & Criticism.
Discover Artists Online through Social Media and Apps
Recommendations for social media tools for finding national & international contemporary artists (from Maryland Institute College of Art).

Find Images

Saskia Digital Image Archive
Contains 30,000 digital images of paintings, sculpture, and architecture, including images from many important collections: the Prado, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Uffizi, and the Louvre as well as archaeological sites in Greece, Italy, Turkey and Egypt. Choose "Browse Collection OFF Campus" for smoothest experience.

Cooper Hewitt Collection
Located in NYC, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum allows you to search by color, country, people, period, and more. Images can be reused for "fair use" educational purposes, with attribution.
Cary Graphic Arts Collection
Includes digitized portions of the Melbert B. Cary, Jr. collection, from 2,300 volumes on typology and graphic arts. Searchable images database, timeline, and browse by collection.
Ad*Access, Duke University
Digital collection of over 7,000 ads from 1911 to 1955.
Life Magazine Archive, Google Books
1936-1972. Free PDFs from Google Books. Print Life Magazine copies are available in the basement of Morris Library.
Internet Archive Book Images, Flickr
A photostream with more than 2.5 million images taken from books digitized by the Internet Archive. All images here were published before 1923 and are in the public domain.
SPACES Archive
SPACES Archives currently houses information on over 1400 self-taught our outsider art pieces from all over the world, with 479 pieces in the online collection.

Images Licensed for Reuse

These images are publicly available or have limited restrictions. Remember that public domain is always "to the best of our knowledge" and use images according to the restrictions described by each hosting site.

Art Images for College Teaching
A set of public domain. images created by Minneapolis College of Art & Design students and staff.
Art Resource
More than 400,000 searchable fine art images, three million transparencies, and black and white photographs of works of painting, sculpture, architecture and the minor arts. All images are subject to the copyright terms of the owners (often museums and galleries in this case).
Open Content Images, Getty Search Gateway
Provides tens of thousands of images from various collections. to aid in the teaching of art and art history, including over 88,000 artworks.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog
More than 1.2 million digitized images from the Library of Congress, many in the public domain.
Metropolitan Museum of Art's Open Access Digital Collection
These images of items in the Met's collection are available for free download and use.
National Gallery of Art Open Access
Repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. More than 29,000 open access digital images up to 3000 pixels each are available free of charge for download and use.
Rijksstudio Search from the Rijksmuseum
A Dutch national museum of art and art history, which has made high-resolution images of art in its collection available for download and reuse via its Rijks Studio software.
Web Gallery of Art
The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum containing over 52,000 images, focusing on European painting and sculpture. Search by artist name, or the generalized search engine.
Wikimedia Commons
Searchable wiki of images, video, and more, most of which are under Creative Commons License or in the public domain, so they can be reused and transformed.

Copyright Info

Before you use any of the images on this page, check out CAA's Code of Best Practices in Fair Use in the Visual Arts to understand how you can use copyrighted images in your teaching and academic writing, as well as in your art and exhibits.

ARTStor Images for Academic Publishing
The Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) program makes available publication-quality images for use in scholarly publications free of charge.
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use in the Visual Arts
Guide to understanding how you can use copyrighted images in your teaching and academic writing, as well as in your art and exhibits.

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used in the text box at the top of the Visual Resources page of the Art and Design guide
Copyright Advisory Office, Columbia University
Columbia's Copyright Office provides a useful guide to Fair Use, use of copyrighted materials in education and publishing, and locating and getting licensing permissions.
Copyright and Art: Issues that Matter to Creators and Users
From the University of Oregon, an in-depth look at the copyright issues surrounding art, fair use, and the public domain.
Model Permission Letters from Columbia's Copyright Advisory Office
Includes sample letters for video use, text use, and use of material in a course management system.

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Subjects: American Sign Language, American Studies, Ancient Practice, Architectural Studies, Architecture, Army Military Science, Art, Art History, Chinese, Cinema, Classical Civilization, Communication Design, Communication Studies, East Asian Civilization, English and Creative Writing, Fashion Studies, French, German, Global Studies, Greek, Industrial Design, Interior Design, Journalism, Languages, Cultures, and International Studies, Latin, Leadership (Military Science), Linguistics, Mass Communication and Media Arts, Media Theory and Research, Music, Musical Theater, Mythology, Philosophy, Professional Media and Media Management Studies, Radio, Television, and Digital Media, Spanish, Studio Art, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Television Studies, Theater, University Studies, Visual and Screen Cultures