Research Guides: FTS: Good Art, Bad Art: General Image Resources

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Image Resources

American Memory
A database containing full text documents, spoken word and sound recordings, still and moving images, maps, and sheet music as a digital record of American history and creativity. From the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions.
Art Images for College Teaching
Images of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance European art and architecture, all photographed on location by the author for non-commercial, educational use. Some post-Renaissance and "non-Western" works are also included, but copyright restrictions prevent the inclusion of most 20th and 21st century works.

Artstor on JSTOR
Artstor is JSTOR’s cross-disciplinary collection of over 2 million rights-cleared images from around the world. Starting August 2024, Artstor images are discoverable alongside JSTOR’s journals, books, and other primary sources on one platform.
Britannica Online Academic Edition
Search the content of encyclopedias, a dictionary and thesaurus, a multimedia database with images, videos, and sound files, the Web's Best Sites, selected magazines and journals, country statistics from World Data Analyst, notable quotations, and Gateway to the Classics (a collection of works of Western history, literature, philosophy, and science). Access is provided by eLibraryMN (ELM).

British Museum: Collection Online
Images and descriptions of objects housed in the British Museum.
Flickr Creative Commons
Many Flickr users offer their work under Creative Commons licenses. Visit the website for details on how you can use images offered under the different types of Creative Commons licenses.
Free to Use and Reuse from the Library of Congress
Explore a subset of the library's digital collections through thematic sets of images from children's books, travel posters, images related to women's history, and more.
Google Images
Search the web for image content.
Image Collections and Online Art
Links to online image collections arranged by geographic area and genre as well as listings of more general collections. For additional art history links, visit the site's home page. From the University of Michigan.
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
Contains catalog records and digital images representing a cross-section of still pictures held by the Library of Congress. Includes more than 1.2 million digitized images; in some cases only thumbnail images will display to those searching outside the Library of Congress due to rights considerations.
Louvre (Paris): Atlas Database of Exhibited Works
Search records and (French) descriptions for 30,000 works of art housed in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The majority of records include images. English interface; searches must be in French.

MasterFILE Complete
This multidisciplinary database provides full text for more than 2,000 general reference publications with full text information dating as far back as 1922. It covers subject areas of general interest and contains full text for more than 1,000 reference books and over 164,400 primary source documents, as well as an image collection of over 502,000 photos, maps & flags.. Note: To limit your search to primary source documents, select "Primary Source Document" in the "Publication Type" box. Access provided by eLibraryMN (ELM).

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York): Works of Art
Use the search box to search for images or artworks, or browse by period and genre. The Metropolitan Museum's website contains over 6,500 images of artworks with descriptions and information about their creators, materials, and provenance.
Minnesota Digital Library: Minnesota Reflections
A searchable collection of images and primary sources from libraries, archives, historical societies, and museums across Minnesota.
Morguefile.com
Free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use. Use this site to find free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits.
National Gallery of Art - NGA Images
A repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. On this website you can search, browse, share, and download images. More than 20,000 open access digital images are available free of charge for download and use.
WorldImages
WorldImages contains over 50,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery. Its images may be freely used for non-profit educational purposes. Use a variety of search techniques, or browse some 500 portfolios organized into subject groupings. (Description from home page.)
Unsplash
High resolution photos free to use for projects and easily searched by theme.