Library of over 2.5 million digital images and their corresponding metadata. Covers many time periods and cultures, and documents the fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, design, anthropology, ethnographic and women's studies, as well as many other forms of visual culture
African Art
National Museum of African Art. Search by artist, object, browse highlighted themes or exhibitions.
Asian Art and Architecture
The Huntington Archive. The archive of Buddhist and Asian Art contains nearly 300,000 original slides and photographs – photographic documentation of art and architecture throughout Asia. Includes videos and online exhibitions.
Asian Historical Architecture. A photographic survey of Asia's architectural heritage with over 15,000 photos of 791 sites in twenty-one countries, background information and virtual tours.
Digital South Asia Library. The images fall into the broad categories of architecture, sculpture, terracotta, painting and numismatics.
European Art and Architecture
Europeana. Over 2,000 European institutions participating. Millions of items in an interface that can be translated into more than 25 languages.
Paris Museums. 100,000 digital images of objects in the museums of Paris.
Rijks Studio (Rijksmuseum). 125,000 works from the Museum’s Collection. Allows viewers to download any of these images in high resolution format and copyright free.
Mapping Gothic France. A database of images, texts, charts and historical maps.
Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur. Contains over 2 million images of art and architecture in over 13 countries.
RIBApix. Images from the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Islamic Art and Architecture
Casselman Archive of Islamic and Mudejar Architecture in Spain. This collection contains over four thousand color slides and black and white photographs of medieval Spain.
ArchNet. An international online community for architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, conservationists, and scholars, with a focus on Muslim cultures and civilisations.
Aga Khan Visual Archive. Over 120,000 slides and digital images of architecture, urbanism, and the built environment in the Islamic world
Latin American/Mesoamerican Art and Architecture
Virtual Mesoamerican Archive. A portal site designed to offer alternative to Google, which will produce more than a million and a half search results.
Library of Congress: Digital Collections. Millions of digital items (documents, photographs, maps, films, and audio recordings) from hundreds of collections.
Getty Open Content Program. 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.
LIFE Magazine Photo Archive. Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.
Smithsonian Institution. Search millions of museum objects, and library & archives materials.
New York Public Library Digital Gallery. Explore one million items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections. This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more.
Art Images for College Teaching. Emphasis on ancient, medieval, and Renaissance European art and architecture.
Art Institute of Chicago. Unrestricted access to tens of thousands of reproductions of artworks in the collection.
Balboa Park Commons. Digitized photos and artifacts from Mingei Museum, Museum of Photographic Arts, SD Air & Space Museum, SD Museum of Man, SD Natural History Museum, SD Museum of Art, and Timken Museum of Art.
Cities and Buildings Database. The Cities and Buildings Database is a collection of digitized images of buildings and cities drawn from across time and throughout the world, available to students, researchers and educators on the web.
Google Art Project. More than 45,000 high resolution images from over 151 museums in 40 different countries.
Louvre Museum. 480,000 collection objects made available online.
MAID: Museum of Modern Art Archives. 50,000+ images digitized from the MoMA Archives, including letters, drawings, photographs, exhibition installation views, scrapbook pages, newsclippings, etc.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. More than 440,000 works from the Met, unrestricted access to 375,000.
National Portrait Gallery, London. 87,000 free downloadable high resolution images for academic use.
Smithsonian Open Access. 2.8 two-dimensional and three-dimensional images available for download, share and re-use.
Wikimedia Commons. Images included here are in the public domain and freely licensed for educational use.
World Images. 100,000 images. Grew out of California State University Image project. All images are copyright cleared for Educational use.
