The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument is one of NASA’s five Earth-observing instruments. Launched on December 18, 1999, on the Terra satellite, ASTER “images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet” by capturing high-resolution (15 to 90 square meters per pixel) images of the Earth. Since then, more than 2.95 million images were captured. The content “ranges from massive scars across the Oklahoma landscape from an EF-5 tornado and the devastating aftermath of flooding in Pakistan, to volcanic eruptions in Iceland and wildfires in California”. Users can view a fraction of the images from this website, while the rest can be accessed from a series of different tools provided.
The Broad is a contemporary art museum that named after their founders, philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad. It is home to 2,000 works of art collected over 50 years by Eli and Edythe. The collection is one of the world’s most prominent collections of post-war and contemporary works of art. They include in-depth representations by influential contemporary artists, which include Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, Kara Walker and Alexander Calder. You can browse the collection by artist last name.
BILDGEIST is a “visual journal of scientific illustrations, illuminated manuscripts, photographs, prints and artworks from the public domain”. The images are of various themes including astronomy, alchemy, mythology, cartography, anthropology, zoology, botany, and general curiosa. Users can filter the contents by period, categories and keyword tags.
This collection is a cabinet of curiosities compiled by Sydney-based Paul K (also known as PK or peakay). It contains rare book illustrations and drawings from digital repositories, covering a wide range of “styles, topics and time periods… from astronomy to zoology and from Art Nouveau to the Renaissance”, as indicated by PK. Each set of images are accompanied by a URL linking to the bibliodyssey website that contains the background commentaries. A book titled “BibliOdyssey : archival images from the Internet” was also published in 2007 based on the compilation. As of October 2015, more than 10,000 images have been uploaded to Flickr.
Wikimedia Commons is a “media file repository” of public domain and freely-licensed educational media content, including images, sounds and video clips. Launched on 7 September 2004 by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Commons uses the “wiki-technology” that is the same technology used in Wikipedia. Wikmedia Commons also aggregates files from other projects, including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikivoyage, Wikispecies, Wikisource, and Wikinews. As of October 2015, there are more than 28.7 million files in more than 120,000 collections. Users can conduct a keyword search or browse the content by topic, type, author, location, license and source.
The Virtual Collection of Asian Masterpieces (VCM) is a project started in 2007 by the Asia Europe Museum Network (ASEMUS). The objective is to “promote mutual understanding and appreciation between peoples of various and different cultures” using masterpieces from museums in Asia. As of October 2015, there are more than 2,500 masterpieces contributed by more than 100 museums. Users can conduct a keyword search or browse the masterpieces by museum, object type, place or period.
This site features visual mash-ups, mosaics, blends and collages created by QThomasBower. As of September 2015, there are about 400 works uploaded.
Established in 1900, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) is one of the largest museums in the United States. The museum collection houses more than 65,000 works of art from antiquity to present day. Users can search by keywords or browse by collecting areas, artist/maker, culture, classification and artist nationality.
The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is the national museum of New Zealand. Their collections online contain information of more than 500,000 works of art. Among them, more than 30000 have downloadable images for reuse in high resolution. Users can search by keywords.
Google developed a visual language that “synthesizes the classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science”, which they called “material design”. Google retains a living document of specifications of the material design. As part of the specifications, Google provides a library of system icons, created based on Google’s design principles, for download. Users can search or browse the icons arranged by categories.
A division of the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Museum at FIT (MFIT) is one of the specialised fashion museums accredited by the American Alliance of Museum. The museum’s permanent collection contains about 50,000 garments and accessories from the 18th century to present. The works include pertinent designers such as Chanel, Dior and Balenciaga. Users can search or browse by time periods and types.
Since mid 1700s, the Princeton University has been collecting art. To date, there are more than “92,000 works of art spanning the world of art from antiquity to the present”, as mentioned by James Christen Steward, the Director of the Princeton University Art Museum. Users can search or browse by different collections.
Raumrot.com presents “free, handpicked stockphotos” for commercial and personal uses. As of July 2015, there are 681 of such images. Users can browse by categories or by special image sets.
As part of the EOS Project Science Office located at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the mission of the Earth Observatory is “to share with the public the images, stories, and discoveries about the environment, Earth systems, and climate that emerge from NASA research, including its satellite missions, in-the-field research, and models”. Users can do a keyword search or browse images by different categories. Users can also generate images of global maps to explore key parts of the Earth’s climate system. The images are based on data provided by the NASA satellites.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is among the largest museums in Canada. To date, there are about 41,000 works in their holdings. Their collections are distributed across six sections: Archaeology and World Cultures, Early to Modern International Art, Quebec and Canadian Art, International Contemporary Art, Decorative Arts and Design, and Graphic Arts and Photography. Users can search or browse images by the different sections.
MNML provides minimalistic wallpapers designed by social media marketeer, AJ Montpetit.
Using the Flickr API, Foter is a search engine for more than 190 million Creative Commons images from varied sources. Users can search images by keywords or browse them by categories. Images can be obtained by downloading or through the provided embed codes of various sizes.
Display is “a curated collection of important modern, mid 20th century graphic design books, periodicals, advertisements and ephemera”. Developed by Kind Company, a web and print design agency based in New York, the intention was to spread awareness of Graphic Design as “a source of educational, historical and scholarly analysis for teachers, students, designers and independent researchers”. Images from Display are digitised from original items within the collection.
The Wallace Collection is a national museum in London that houses works of art collected in the 18th and 19th centuries by the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the son of the 4th Marquess. Through Wallace Live, users can search for images of the works of art.
Herman Miller is an American furniture design firm and among the first to produce modern furniture. Working together with designers George Nelson and Charles and Ray Eames, the company produced some of the classics in industrial design. Their website provides a library of images, which contains Herman Miller’s white sweep environments, and detailed product photography and renderings. Users can search or browse by different categories. The website also provides other design resources, such as materials, 3D renderings and product downloads.
