Image resources available to Penn State users
Art History Department Visual Resource Collection
A growing collection of over 98,000 images documenting the history of painting, sculpture, architecture, and other visual arts from prehistoric times to the present. Includes images from the VRC’s image collection as well as professional photography that has been licensed for Penn State use from vendors such as Scholars Resource and Davis Art Images, in addition to a selection of art works from the Palmer Museum of Art. A current valid Penn State user ID and password are required to access this collection.
JSTOR images
Artstor images are now available on JSTOR. For information on how to use Artstor images on JSTOR, please see the LibGuide, Artstor on JSTOR: Working with Images. A current valid Penn State user ID and password are required to access this collection.
Palmer Museum of Art
The permanent collection of the Palmer Museum of Art includes American and European paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, and sculpture; contemporary European, American, and Japanese studio ceramics; Asian ceramics, jades, paintings, and prints; and objects from ancient European, African, Near Eastern, and American cultures. This database contains descriptions of more than 8,000 works as well as images for many of them.
Worldwide Building and Landscape Pictures
A growing collection of several thousand color images of historic architecture and landscape design. A current valid Penn State user ID and password are required to access this collection.
Media Commons Free Media Library
The Media Commons team has curated a list of websites with images, audio, video, and 3D assets freely available.
External online image collections
Art Images for College Teaching (AICT)
This began as a personal project dedicated to the principle of free exchange of image resources for and among members of the educational community. Allan Kohl of the Minneapolis College of Art And Design has made these images available.
Bluffton Digital Imaging Project
Art historical images of sculpture and architecture from pre-historic to post-modern. Over 14,000 digital images offered by Mary Ann Sullivan of Bluffton University freely available for personal or educational purposes.
Flickr
Online photo management and sharing application. Users upload and tag (label) photos, which they may choose to share publicly and allow others to tag for better search results. When opened, images available for downloading feature an ALL SIZES button that will reveal download options.
George Eastman House
A steadily growing digital image sampler and browsing resource for the vast photography holdings of George Eastman House.
Google Advanced Image Search
Google’s image search engine provides links to countless images on the Web, many of which are low quality with frequently extraneous search results. To narrow search results with higher quality images, use the Advanced Image Search and specify an image size of at least medium.
Looking for Good Art
In-depth guide in three parts: 1) Web Resources and Image Databases; 2) Image Retrieval; 3) Glorious National Collections.
Mother of all Art and Art History Links
University of Michigan’s compilation of art history departments, research resources, image collections, museums, and online exhibitions.
Smithsonian Open Access
Here you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images without asking. With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to nearly 3 million 2D and 3D digital items from their collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.
Web Gallery of Art
A virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture of the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism and Romanticism periods (1100-1850), currently containing over 20,300 reproductions.
WorldImages
Provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project. It contains over 50,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery. WorldImages is accessible anywhere and its images may be freely used for non-profit educational purposes.