Art 350: Methods of Art History

Libraries across the globe are digitizing their public domain materials and making them available online.  These include:

• Europeana -- public domain materials, including visual art, from libraries in the European Union
• DPLA -- public domain materials, including visual art, from libraries in the United States

Most major museums have also begun digitizing their materials.  Search their websites for more information. Here are a few examples, but there are many more museums worldwide that you could investigate! 

• Art Institute of Chicago -- Thousands of images and texts from the Art Institute of Chicago's collections.
• Art Museum Images from Cartography Associates -- Over 90,000 works of art from collections of contributing museums worldwide!
• Asian Art Museum Online Collection -- Digitized collections of art from a variety of Asian countries.
• Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Collections -- Digital collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
• Guggenheim Collection Online -- Over 1,700 artworks by over 625 artists from the Guggenheim.
• Kyoto National Museum Online Collections -- Online repository of materials at the Kyoto National Museum in Japan.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art -- All of their open-access materials in high resolution (all works in public domain are available!).
• Met Thomas J. Watson Library Digital Collections -- Not to be confused with the Met's public-domain artwork. Digitized materials from the Library for the Met.
• Minneapolis Institute of Art -- Images from the Twin Cities' premier art museum.
• Museum of Fine Arts Boston -- Museum of Fine Arts Boston's browsable digital collections.
• Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Archives -- Finding aid for MoMA's Archives Image Database (MAID). Contains "a select but growing body of materials digitized from our collections."
• Smithsonian - Archives of American Art -- Smithsonian's Archives of American Art has made a significant number of their collections available to browse online!

See InspiredPublic's list of public-domain/open access museum list for more!

https://inspiredpublic.com/museums/

Here are links to citation examples for visual arts. If you are viewing the artwork reproduced in a book or online, you will add the book or website information at the end of the citation.  The sample citations at the links include examples of this.

• Citing Images in MLA Style -- scroll down to "Painting, Sculpture, or Photograph"
• Citing Images in Chicago Style -- scroll down to "Visual Images"

If you are reproducing artworks in your own works -- for example, in a slideshow as part of a class presentation -- please abide by the licensing instructions provided by the source of the image. Reputable image sites will include licensing instructions with the image download instructions.

For example, here are the licensing parameters for images downloaded from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It allows the image to be used for for non-commercial research and also for teaching and instruction, so incorporating it in a class presentation is permitted.

If you have questions about licensing, please schedule a research appointment with Karen Olson, the Research & Instruction Librarian for Music and Fine Arts.