LibGuides: Museum Studies: Where to Find Images

Where is it located?

Do you know where the artwork is located?

If you know which museum or gallery the artwork is located in, you can check that institution's website for more detailed information on the artwork, usually including high-quality images of the artwork. Many museums and galleries will provide the most up to date information on items in their collections.

The museum your artwork is located in may also have their own collection-specific guides to help researchers. Some examples are listed below.

Apollo's Open Access Image Libraries
List of museum and archives that provide unrestricted downloads of high-resolution images. This list is updated on a regular basis.
Art Institute of Chicago Collection
Explore thousands of artworks in the museum’s wide-ranging collection—from our world-renowned icons to lesser-known gems from every corner of the globe—as well as our books, writings, reference materials, and other resources.
Cleveland Museum of Art Collections Online
Search the entire collection or browse by category of this major museum's holdings.
Florida International University - The Wolfsonian
One of the largest university art collections in the country focuses on North American and European decorative arts, propaganda, architecture, and industrial and graphic design dating from 1850 to 1950.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The largest art museum in the western United States, the online collection allows users to search more than 142,000 objects that illuminate 6,000 years of artistic expression across the globe.
Metropolitan Museum of Art: HeilbrunnTimeline of Art History
The Timeline places more than 6000 works in a comprehensive chronological, geographical, and thematic context.
National Museum of African Art
The National Museum of African Art (NMAfA) began as a private educational institution in 1964 to promote cross-cultural understanding in the social sciences and arts. Founded by Warren M. Robbins, it was known as the Museum of African Art, located in the home of Frederick Douglass, the African American abolitionist and statesman. In August 1979, by enactment of Public Law 95-414, the museum became part of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum and research complex dedicated to the increase and diffusion of knowledge.
Smithsonian Archives of American Art
The image gallery contains over 8,000 photographs, letters, sketches, diaries, and other documents which have been scanned and individually described.

Other Helpful Resources

If you aren't sure where your artwork is located or haven't picked a specific piece yet, here are some other resources for finding images.

Art Cyclopedia
Fine art search engine. Search by author, title of the work or location. Use this to find museums that works are in or to point you to other resources.
ArtNet Artists A-Z List
Browse over 340,000 artists. Includes artist bibliographic information as well general information (i.e. title, date, medium, origin, etc.) for their individual artworks.
ARTstor Public Collections
Browse almost 1.3 million images in the ARTstor database are openly available.
British Library Online Gallery
This online gallery contains over 30,000 images from the British Library's collection.
Calisphere
Calisphere is a gateway to digital collections from California's great libraries, archives, and museums. Discover over 1,850,000 images, texts, and recordings—and counting.
Creative Commons-Flickr
Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license.
Digital Public Library of America
A discovery tool for public domain content held by the nation's archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions.
Europeana
Links to millions of digital items from major libraries, archives, and museums around Europe.
Google Arts & Culture
Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
The digitized images from the Library of Congress includes photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.
MorgueFile
The morguefile contains photographs freely contributed by many artists to be used in creative projects by visitors to the site. To acknowledge the artist's accomplishments, we ask that you credit the photographer when possible. Any questions regarding liabilities should be directed to the specific photographer.
Museum of the Moving Image
Museum of the Moving Image advances the public understanding and appreciation of the art, history, technique, and technology of film, television, and digital media.
New York Public Library Digital Gallery
Provides free and open access to over 800,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.
New York Times Multimedia and Photos
NYT multimedia special section and search
ArtStor - Shared Shelf Commons
Shared Shelf Commons is a free, open-access library of images. Search and browse collections with tools to zoom, print, export, and share images.
Ask Art
AskART is an online database containing over 200,000 artists. From its inception the focus was on American artists from the early 16th-Century through the present. However, in January of 2007 the database expanded to include international artists' auction records.
US Government Photos and Images
This website provides links to many government image collections. Some of the photos are in the public domain or U.S. government works and may be used without permission or fee. However, some images may be protected by license or copyright.
Vads: Online Resource for Visual Arts
Collection of more than 120,000 images of art and design from cultural institutions across the UK, including universities, libraries, museums, and archives.
Vircona: a Catalog of Native American Artists
A database of Native North American visual artists in the image collection at the University of New Mexico.
Wellcome Collection
Images from medical and social history, anatomy, contemporary healthcare, and biomedical science.
Wikimedia Commons
A database of 11,994,069 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute including files from the National Archives and Records Administration.
Worldimages - California State University IMAGE Project
Contains approximately 80,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery.
Artsy
Artsy features the world’s leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions, all in one place. Their growing database of 300,000 images of art, architecture, and design by 40,000 artists spans historical, modern, and contemporary works, and includes the largest online database of contemporary art.