Art Research: Image Websites

Millions of photographs from the LIFE magazine photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today

Extensive website containing free eBooks, images, video, audio, and other media to view and download. Also includes the Internet Wayback Machine, for accessing archived, past versions of websites.

Over 1 million images taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books. The images have no known copyright restrictions.

Images from archives, museums, libraries and research centers such as the New York Public Library, Smithsonian, Library of Congress and Getty Research Institute. The images have no known copyright restrictions.

The Digital Library of Georgia is a gateway to Georgia's history and culture found in digitized books, manuscripts, photographs, government documents, newspapers, maps, audio, video, and other resources.

A portal that delivers students, teachers, scholars, and the public to incredible resources, wherever they may be in America. Far more than a search engine, the portal provides innovative ways to search and scan through the united collection of millions of items, including by timeline, map, format, subject, and partner.

Discover exhibits and collections from museums and archives all around the world. Explore cultural treasures in extraordinary detail, from hidden gems to masterpieces.

The Wellcome Library of Medical History provides images on themes ranging from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and biomedical science. Many of the images have creative commons licenses allowing re-use.

80,000 images, global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery. Via California State University

Online platform for discovering and collecting art, comprising 50,000+ artworks by 11,000+ artists from leading galleries, museums, foundations, and artists’ estates. Some images may be downloaded.

Public domain art images from Getty Museum collections

Find images and other material across several of the Getty Museum's repositories. Note that some resources are copyrighted; please check rights statements before re-using material.

Links to a variety of journals that have been digitized and are available free to access on the Internet. The dates given are for the period covered by the digitization

250,000 objects from the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler Museums - includes ancient through contemporary works.

400,000+ images from the Museum's collections. Some images may be used freely for non-commercial scholarly purposes - look for an "OASC" under the image to verify.

Includes more than 20,000 open access digital images, available free of charge for download and use

40,000+ high-resolution images of Asian and American art, may be used for any non-commercial purpose. Courtesy of the Smithsonian's Freer and Sackler Galleries and Freer Study Collection

Independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. Works are available for educational, noncommercial use only.

Online resource for visual arts that includes over 100,000 images as well as essays based on the image collections.

Duke Library's Digital Collections project that provides free access to images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.

Over 9,000 images, with database information, relating to the early history of advertising in the United States

Access over 33,000 digitized political posters from around the world

Collection focuses on comics created specifically for the web and supplements the Library of Congress’ extensive holdings in both comic books, graphic novels, and original comic art.

The purpose of this webpage is to promote a greater understanding and appreciation of Asian architecture through images and descriptive text

Collection documents achievements in architecture, engineering, and landscape design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types, engineering technologies, and landscapes

Gguide to more than 1,250 sacred sites, holy places, pilgrimage destinations, religious architecture and sacred art in over 60 countries around the world. In addition to richly illustrated articles, there are photo galleries containing over 24,000 high-quality images

Visual and easy-to-use tool for locating old and historical maps in libraries around the world

Links to historic maps from 1400's through early 1900's, and also provides links to online historic map collections for specific states and cultures