Tookapic Stock Photos

Tookapic was launched as a platform to help users to “develop a habit of daily photo taking in a fun and addictive way”. The habit is gamified where users will be awarded with points and badges. Users are also able to share their images for reuse. The stock photos section of the website presents the pictures shared by the community. As of November 2015, there are more than 14,000 stock photos uploaded with 66% free for download. Users can search or browse by different categories.

Virtual Collection of Asian Masterpieces

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.

National Gallery of Australia Collection

The National Gallery of Australia is one of the largest museums in the country. It houses more than 160,000 works of art in Australian art, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander art, Asian art, European and American art, Asian art and Pacific art. Users can conduct a keyword search or browse by the different categories.

Australian Prints + Printmaking

Australian Prints + Printmaking provides “a gateway for information on printed images from Australia and the Asia Pacific region”. The site provides a database of prints and printmaking by artists from Australia and the pacific regions, including New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. The site also allows users to explore the collections through three experimental web interfaces, designed by Mitchell Whitelaw and Ben Ennis Butler. The interfaces are created as part of their research into ‘generous interfaces’ that attempt to provide new ways to explore digital collections. Users can search or browse by artists, subjects, works and networks, and decade summary.

MFAH Collections

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.

LUNA Commons

LUNA Commons is a source for “finding valuable, educational content from digital collections”. It is powered by LUNA Imaging, Inc. The content is contributed by institutions worldwide and presented by the LUNA Browser. Users can search by keyword and narrow the search results by Who, What, When and Where. Users can also browse by various collections available. To take advantage of the advanced features of the LUNA Browser, users can register for an account to customise viewing preferences, create slideshows, search by media or add annotations.

Te Papa Collections Online

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.

Princeton University Art Museum Collections

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.

Foter

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.

Everystockphoto

Launched in 2006, Everystockphoto is an image search engine that “index and search millions of freely licensed photos”. Users can search for millions of images and filter by different types of licenses: Free Licenses, Public Domain or Creative Commons. The platform also provides an advanced search option that allows users to search by tags, shapes, resolution or sizes.

Multicolr Search Lab

Powered by the TinEye MultiColourEngine API, Multicolr Search Lab allows users to search from “20 million Creative Commons images on Flickr” using colours. Users can select up to 5 different colours to search and refine their searches with tags.

Freepik

From vectors to PSD files, icons and stock photos, Freepik provides resources for graphic and web design. As of August 2015, the site has received more than 440 million downloads. Developed by “a team of designers, developers, professionals of marketing, communication and administration” based in Spain, Freepik offers two types of content: free and exclusive graphic resources by Freepik, and graphic resources belonging to others. Users can search or browse by categories.

Compfight

Compfight is an image search tool developed to “locate images for blogs, comps, inspiration, and research”. The platform uses the Flickr APIs, but is not affiliated with Flickr.

Europeana

Launched in 2008, Europeana is a multilingual web portal that aggregates items from galleries, libraries, archives and museums in Europe. Users can search and explore millions of objects that range from books and manuscripts to photos and paintings, television and film, sculpture and crafts, diaries and maps, and sheet music and recordings.

Tret’yakov Gallery Collections

The Tret’yakov Gallery (or the State Tretyakov Gallery) houses a comprehensive collection of Russian fine art from the 12th century onwards. Their digital collection allows user to search or browse more than 2,000 artworks by categories, periods and artists.

Callisphere by UC Libraries

Callisphere is “the University of California’s free public gateway to a world of primary sources”. Powered by the California Digital Library (CDL), the platform currently have more than 230,000 images, contributed by 139 archives, libraries, museums, and historical societies in California. Users may search or explore the images across different themes or topics.

Open F|S (Freer|Sackler)

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery are the Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art. Together, both galleries holds “some of the most important holdings of Asian art in the world”, with Asian-inspired American art and contemporary art in Asia. More than 40,000 objects are available online. Users can search or browse by object type, topic, name, place and date.

David Rumsey Map Collection

Started more than 30 years ago by Cartography Associates, the David Rumsey Map Collection “focuses on rare 16th through 20th century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania”. The collection includes “atlases, wall maps, globes, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children’s, and manuscript maps”. Their digital collection contains more than 61,000 images, where users can search or browse by types, locations and periods. The website also provides many ways to view the map collections, such as Luna Browser, Georeferencer, Google Earth, etc. Learn more about the evolution of the physical collection into the online collection here.

Museu d’Art de Catalunya Collection

The Museu d’Art de Catalunya, or MNAC in short, is a national museum located in Barcelona, Spain. The museum is known for its outstanding collections of Romanesque mural paintings and Catalan Modernism. Their digital collection contains more than 8,500 images of artworks from their collections. Users can browse the collections, search and narrow the results by classification, themes and period.

LACMA Collections

LACMA houses more than 120,000 objects across different media, region and periods such as Greek, Roman and Etruscan art, Asian art, American and Latin American art, decorative arts and design, photography, and modern and contemporary art. The digital collections provide access to more than 53,000 images of artworks with more than 20,000 that LACMA believes to be in the public domain. Users can search and filter the results by artist, classification, curatorial area, periods and location.