LibGuides: Art Resources: Images & Videos

Artstor on JSTOR

The Artstor Digital LIbray collection is now in JSTOR - along with other image collections contributed by partnering institutions like universities, museums, and community and private organizations.

Not sure how to use JSTOR for image searches? Go to the Using JSTOR to Find and Save Images page for video tutorials!

Artstor on JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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- Why search here?
  The Artstor collection of more than 2.5 million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences is now integrated with JSTOR. Explore, discover, and interact with images from around the world using a suite of tools that encourage direct interaction with content.
- What's included?
  Zoom in on images to explore details, compare and contrast images side by side, and create presentations with embedded text and annotations..Use JSTOR Workspace to save your research.
- How do I cite it?
  Click the ‘CITE THIS ITEM’ button to the right of the image, choose either the MLA or Chicago citation, then click the ‘Copy to Clipboard’ button. In NoodleTools, choose Database, then Photo or Illustration (or Reference Article, as appropriate), then use the Quick Cite option to paste in the citation. The image URL will be in the citation.

Britannica ImageQuest

Use Britannica ImageQuest to get easy online access to over three million images and 11, 000 videos from over 60 leading collections. The Bridgeman Art Gallery, Getty Images, the Science Photo Library, Ingram Publishing, the National Geographic Society, and other trusted media sources have joined with Britannica to provide the best and broadest offering of imagery, videos, and clip art-materials (infographics, signs and symbols, graphic concepts and vector illustrations), all rights-cleared for educational, non-commercial use.

My Media

Set yourself up with a personal My Britannica account and save images and videos. Use it to view your favorite media and to organize images and videos into albums.

Media Tools

Select an image or video of your choice to save, share, and cite. All images and videos come with citations in four formatting styles. Save media to your personal My Britannica account, download directly to your computer, or print images instantly.

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- Why search here?
  Britannica ImageQuest has high quality images and video clips that you can use in school projects.
- What's included?
  Over three million rights-cleared images from 62 leading collections; each photo or illustration comes with the source, the copyright holder, caption, keywords, and complete citation information. Video clips are organized into four ‘galleries’: Animals, Earth & Geography, Places, and Science.
- How do I cite it?
  In NoodleTools, choose Database, then Photo or Illustration. Click the Cite tab below the image, select a citation style, then copy the citation provided.

Learn 360

Learn360 provides streaming video, with over 2,500 full-length films and segments on the arts. Videos can be downloaded or shared, and users can create citations and custom segments. Learn360 has other non-video resources too, including images and audio. Login with your WSA Google email address.

Filter videos by:

Topic (Dance, Music, Theater, Film & Television, or Visual Arts)
Format (full titles, segments, series)
Type of film (Documentary Film, Educational Video, Feature Film & Drama, Newsreel & Primary Source)
Subject (Applied Art, Architecture, Art Appreciation, Art History, or Photography)
Producer (A&E, BBC, Cambridge Educational, and many more)
Language (English, French, Spanish, Russian)
Copyright date

Learn360 - Visual and Performing Arts Video Collection
Search Learn360's collection of over 2,500 films on the visual and performing arts. Filter results by topic: Dance, Music, Theater, Film & Television, or Visual Arts.

Learn360 This link opens in a new window
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- Why search here?
  Learn360 provides access to streaming multimedia covering many subjects, including Engineering and Technology, Health and Guidance, History, Math, Science, Social Studies, Visual and Performing Arts, and World Languages.NOTE: Learn360 does not work with Safari; use Chrome instead.
- What's included?
  It has more than 137,000 multimedia resources—including high-quality full-length videos, video clips, interactives, images, audio files, articles, activities, worksheets, and more—from more than 200 top educational producers. New content is added regularly.
- How do I cite it?
  Look for the Cite button below the video thumbnail image. Select MLA or Chicago, then click the Export to NoodleTools button to transfer the citation directly to your NoodleTools project.

Citing Works of Art, Photographs, and Images in NoodleTools

Watch this tutorial to learn how to use NoodleTools to cite images in art: photographs or illustrations, "born digital" images like logos or graphics, or works of visual art.

Tutorial created by Susan Timmons, Upper School Librarian, The Harpeth Hall School, Ann Scott Carell Library, Nashville, Tennessee, September 5, 2018, using Screencast-O-Matic.

Museum and Library Image Collections

Digital Newberry
The Newberry is an independent research library in Chicago, offering readers an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, maps, music, manuscripts, and other printed material spanning six centuries. Digital Newberry is their searchable database of over 1.7 million high-resolution images, derived from collection items, and available to anyone without licensing or permission fees to the library.
The J. Paul Getty Museum
Searchable image database of artwork held by the J. Paul Getty Museum. housands of images of artworks are available for download, without charge, under the Getty's Open Content Program. Look for the Download button under the image.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Search the Museums collection of over 5,000 years of art from around the world. Filter results by artist or culture, object type or material, geographic location, date or era, or museum department. The Met's Open Access Artworks collection includes 375,000 hi-res images of public-domain works, all of which can be downloaded, shared, and remixed without restriction. This group of Open Access images are also available on Artstor.
Museum of New Zealand - Te Papa Tongarewa
The Museum of New Zealand has recently made over 30,000 images available for download and re-use in high resolution as a part of its Collections Online library. It’s best to search this page after first checking the “with downloadable images” check box so that you only get results that are free for download. Each image specifies its license, many of which are remixable and have no copyright associated with them at all.
NGA Images - National Gallery of Art
NGA Images is 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. A standards-based reproduction guide and a help section provide advice for both novices and experts. More than 45,000 open access digital images up to 4000 pixels each are available free of charge for download and use.
Smithsonian Collections Search Center
An online catalog containing most of the Smithsonian Institution's major collections from their museums, archives, libraries, and research units. There are 9.3 million catalog records relating to areas for Art & Design, History & Culture, and Science & Technology with over 1.3 million images, videos, audio files, podcasts, blog posts and electronic journals.
Wellcome Collection
The Wellcome Library in London has made 100,000 art and medicine images available online for open use. This collection is where to look for offbeat, bizarre photos including medical art of all types including manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography and advertisements. The images may be used for commercial or personal purposes, with an acknowledgement of the original source (Wellcome Library, London).

US Government Online Image Collections

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Access to print, pictorial and audio-visual collections and other digital services of the Library of Congress, including American history and culture (from American Memory), historic newspapers (from Chronicling America), historic sound recordings (from National Jukebox), collections, articles and special presentations on music, theater and dance materials (from the Performing Arts Encyclopedia), prints and photographs (with over 1 million digital images), Veterans History Project, U.S. Legislative information, and collections of archived web sites.
NARA Online Exhibits
The National Archives and Records Administration offers a fantastic library of photographic images including photos of Churchill and Roosevelt, Nixon and Elvis, JFK and Jackie, World War II photos, and many many more historical photos. You can find many of them through this link to the online exhibits page, while others are available on their Flickr page, and thousands more can be found within their Online Catalog. All of the U.S. National Archives’ images that are part of The Flickr Commons are marked “no known copyright restrictions.” As for the rest of the site; “generally, materials produced by Federal agencies are in the public domain and may be reproduced without permission.”
NASA
NASA has hi-res image collections available both on their website and on Flickr. Here you can find images of the Mars Utopian Plain, the moom landing, astronauts, space shuttles, and so much more. NASA images are generally not copyrighted.
NOAA Digital Library
The NOAA Digital Library collections reflect NOAA’s broad mission of advancing science “from the bottom of the ocean to the surface of the sun.” Images within are contributed by NOAA staff and help depict NOAA’s work to explain and interpret our changing environment. The approximately 70,000 images are organized into broad collections, then further arranged into specific galleries. Featured collections include Voyage to Inner Space, Coast & Geodetic Survey, Santuaries, and National Weather Service.
United States Department of Agriculture
The US Dept of Agriculture, Agriculture Research Service (USDA ARS) has high quality digital photos available for download that are copyright-free and in the public domain - images of crops, animals, insects, food, plants, and more. Their online catalog has more than 6,500 photo images.

Other Websites with Image Collections

Art Images for College Teaching
Art Images for College Teaching is a collection of 3,064 images of classical art and architecture with related descriptions freely available to the public. The University of Michigan Library provides access to this collection for educational and research purposes.
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. The portal provides innovative ways to search and scan through the united collection of millions of items, including by timeline, map, virtual bookshelf, format, subject, and partner. "Discover 50,753,061 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States."
Google Arts and Culture
Features content from over 1000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online. Organized by broad topic: Art (Artists, Mediums, Art Movements, Partners, Objects, Time, Color); History (Historical Figures, Historical Events, Partners, Objects, Time); and Wonders (Places, Partners).
LIFE Photo Archive
Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google. Images include famous personalities such as Marilyn Monroe, Charles Lindbergh, etc. as well as photos of American history and Americana. The collection is organized by decades (1860s through 1970s) and subject category (people, places, events, sports, culture).
Wikimedia Commons
A database of over 106 million freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute: images, sound, video. To find images by topic or subject, search under the 'Topics' or Categories' areas of the site.
World Images
The WorldImages database provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project. It contains approximately 100,000 images, is global in coverage, and includes all areas of visual imagery. The images are organized into over 900 portfolios that appear alphabetically in the Portfolios screen. You can use them or explore the database using Browse. Here, the portfolios are hierarchically organized, beginning with continents and subject grouping.

Art Resources: Images & Videos

Finding Images and Videos