Research Guides: A Guide to Studio Art Research: Find More: Images & Media

Finding and Using Images

ARTstor Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Only Open Access, Public Images, available
Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive reference work offers over 1,600 up-to-date entries on Islamic art and architecture ranging from the Middle East to Central and South Asia, Africa, and Europe and spans over a thousand years of history.

Artsy
Features the world’s leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions in a growing database of images of art, architecture, and design. The collection spans historical, modern, and contemporary works, and includes the largest online database of contemporary art.
Digital Public Library of America
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science.
Getty Open Content
Public domain art images from Getty Museum collections
Getty Search Gateway
Discover the variety of free resources available across the Getty's collections, which include: the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute. With this free tool, users can browse collections broadly, by type of resource (i.e., paintings, books, archives), or to search for very specific subjects—historical periods, artists, object types, etc.
Google Art Project
Image Library created by Google containing masterpieces of art from some of the world's most famous museums. Images can be saved and shared through a Google account.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
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.
National Gallery of Art
Includes more than 20,000 open access digital images, available free of charge for download and use
Native American History and Culture: Finding Pictures
An overview of Prints & Photographs Division visual resources, including photographs, drawings, engravings, lithographs, posters, and architectural drawings, related to North American indigenous communities. Includes search strategies and tips.
Open F|S Smithsonian
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
OpenGLAM
OpenGLAM is an initiative run by Open Knowledge that promotes free and open access to digital cultural heritage held by Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums.
UbuWeb
Independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. Works are available for educational, noncommercial use only.
Wikimedia Commons
The WikiMedia Commons makes available public domain and freely-licensed educational media. Maintained by volunteers, users can upload their own images, request images, identify images, and subscribe to syndicated feeds.

These websites list many sources of free public domain and creative commons images.

It's important to verify copyright status and allowed uses for each source you select.

Creative Commons Resources and Search
Please note that search.creativecommons.org is not a search engine, but rather offers convenient access to search services provided by other independent organizations. CC has no control over the results that are returned. Do not assume that the results displayed in this search portal are under a CC license. You should always verify that the work is actually under a CC license by following the link. Since there is no registration to use a CC license, CC has no way to determine what has and hasn't been placed under the terms of a CC license. If you are in doubt you should contact the copyright holder directly, or try to contact the site where you found the content.
Unsplash
All photos published on Unsplash are licensed under Creative Commons Zero which means you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or Unsplash.

Whether images come from the Internet, a database, or other resource, it's your responsibility to determine when, where and how they may be legally and ethically used.

Check out the resources on the Purdue Owl site for details on using and choosing visual materials in your work and how to cite an image using or MLA or Chicago style.

An citation in MLA typically looks like this:

Artist or user name. Title. Date the image was created. Museum, City. Web. Database name or title of site. Date of access.

A citation in Chicago typically looks like this:

Artist's name. Title or description (image). Available from: Website or database. <URL>. (Accessed on date).