Image Databases
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Artstor This link opens in a new window
Artstor is JSTOR’s cross-disciplinary collection of over 2 million rights-cleared images from around the world and composed of approximately 300 curated subcollections. Note: Artstor is now on JSTOR. The Artstor website retires on August 1, 2024.
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AP Newsroom This link opens in a new window
A collection of photos, images, video clips and audio files from the Associated Press. Coverage: 1895 until present.
Online Image Resources and Digital Collections
Many museums have searchable databases of their collections. Below are some museums and libraries with rich collections. If you know a museum has holdings of artwork you are researching, find the website and look for the "collections" feature on the website.
Museums
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Cooper HewittThe Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design museum is located in New York City. You can browse the collection by many facets, including by color!
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Fine Arts Museums of San FranciscoImages and information about art in the de Young and Legion of Honor museums.
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Getty Museum CollectionsSearchable image database of artwork at the Getty Museum.
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Metropolitan Museum of ArtSearch the Collection Database and the Timeline of Art History
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Images from the SmithsonianImages from the Smithsonian Institution.
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Winterthur MuseumThe Winterthur Museum has an extensive furniture and decorative arts collection.
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SFMOMAExplore digital copies of art at SFMOMA
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MOMA CollectionVirtually explore the Museum of Modern Art's collection.
Libraries
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SJSU Digital CollectionsA collections of rare and unique materials held by Special Collections & Archives and the Beethoven and Steinbeck Centers.
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DPLA ImagesDPLA Images lets you search the Digital Public Library of America, a collection of millions of cultural heritage objects from libraries, archives, and museums across the country, for images.
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New York Public Library Digital CollectionsOver 700,000 items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections. A living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more.
Databases with Photographs and Images
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Calisphere: a world of primary sources This link opens in a new window A public gateway to a world of primary sources, including those for teachers and lesson plans. More than 150,000 digitized items — including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts — reveal the diverse history and culture of California. There is a section titled: Especially for Teachers which gives information and links about teaching and learning with primary sources, including sample lesson plans, primary source analysis sheets, etc.
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CSU Japanese American History Digitization Project This link opens in a new window The collections represent approximately 300 linear feet of archival materials that focus on some of the most striking events related to the treatment of minorities in U.S. history. The topics cover an enormous range of subjects central to Japanese-American life before, during and after World War II, including immigration, the California Alien Land Acts of 1913 and 1920, the War Relocation Authority (WRA), organizations supporting Japanese Americans, redress, Japanese Peruvians, hostage exchanges on the S.S. Gripsholm, sports, and the U.S. Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Camps represented include Jerome, Gila River, Rohwer, Manzanar, Tanforan, Poston, Amache/Granada, Heart Mountain, Crystal City and more. Among the archives are letters, photographs, oral histories, camp publications, papers of camp administrators and counselors, poetry, art works, leases, certificates and other documents to prove citizenship, and school yearbooks. The project tends to focus on the digitization of paper, photographs, and media such as audio and video.
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Images of the American Civil War This link opens in a new window The collection is drawn from archives around the country, documenting the lives of Union and Confederate soldiers. Includes photographs, posters, and ephemera of nineteenth-century Americana as experienced from social, military, and political perspectives.
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Garland Encyclopedia of World Music This link opens in a new window Resource for music research of world's peoples that contains an overview of the region, a survey of its musical heritage, traditions and themes; and a description of specific musical genres, practices, and performances. Articles include detailed photographs that show musicians, musical instrument, and the cultural context of dances, rituals, and ceremonies. Other images include drawings, maps, and musical examples for further study.
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Gilded Age This link opens in a new window This collection brings together approximately 40,000 pages of full text, photographs, songs for listening online, and other primary materials, along with video interviews and twenty-five critical documentary essays covering issues that came to the fore in the Gilded Age such as immigration and migration, racism and civil rights, labor and industry, women and universal suffrage, A American Indians, and the environment. Each documentary essay poses an interpretive question and then illuminates it with dozens of annotated primary documents, introductions, and essays.