This database offers access to high resolution images from the Folger Shakespeare Library, including books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, and art. It is a good resource to explore more about the culture, people, art, costumes and fashion design during (or under the influence) of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). To date, the database contains more than 90,000 images. Users can show multiple images side-by-side, zoom in and out, view cataloging information when available, export thumbnails in various sizes, and construct persistent URLs linking back to items or searches.
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.
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco houses more than 18,000 objects ranging from “tiny jades to monumental sculptures”. From the “earliest dated Chinese Buddha image to the contemporary works”, their collections span across different cultures, dynasties, religions and geographies over 6,000 years. The museum provides more than 12,000 images in their online collection. Users can search or browse the collections by the different types of art.
The Art Institute of Chicago was founded as both a museum and school for fine arts around 1879. Today, it houses more than 300,000 works of art in their permanent collections, ranging from “Chinese bronzes to contemporary design and from textiles to installation art”. The digital collection contains more than 80,000 images, where you can search or browse by categories. The website also allows you to sign up for an account and make your own art collections by selecting artworks and adding notes about them. You can save your “collections” to revisit in the future or share them with your friends.
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 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.
Wellcome Images is one of the visual collections of the Wellcome Library. It contains themes ranging “from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and science”. To date, there are close to 130,000 images across different themes.
Through the Open Content Program, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute provide access to more than 87,000 images from their collections. The images include more than 72,000 from the Research Institute’s Foto Arte Minore archive, which features photographs of the art and architecture of Italy over 30 years by German photographer and scholar Max Hutzel (1913–1988). Other images include paintings, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, antiquities, sculpture, decorative arts, artists’ sketchbooks, watercolors, rare prints from the 16th through the 18th century, and 19th-century architectural drawings of cultural landmarks. Over time, images from the Getty Conservation Institute will be added, as well as more images from the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute.
The British Museum is one of the largest museums in the world that is dedicated to human history and culture. Currently a work in progress, the British Museum database is “an inventory of the Museum’s collection and aims to record what is known about it”. To date, the database contains more than 2.1 million records with new records, updates and images added every week.
Based in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the State Hermitage Museum is one of the world’s largest and oldest museums. From Paleolithic to contemporary, the museum has more than 3 million items in its holding. The museum also has the world’s largest collection of paintings, which includes famous paintings from the great masters, such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, etc.
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is continually making their collections accessible online. To date, their collections span from paintings, prints, drawings, photography to more specific works like African art, Asian art, decorative arts and new media.
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston is one of the most comprehensive museums in the world. From Ancient Egypt to contemporary art, the museum has nearly 450,000 works of art in its holdings. Its digital collection allows users to search and refine the results by collection type and classification.
The Van Gogh Museum is an art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh. It contains the largest collection of his paintings and drawings in the world. The digital collection contains more than 830 works by Vincent and his contemporaries. The digital images of the works can be downloaded for non-commercial purposes in high-resolution, which are an average of 6,000 x 6,000 pixels. The collection can be searched or filtered by artist, location, year, type and genre.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales is one of Australia’s leading art museums. It contains more than 30,000 objects of Australian, European and Asian art. More than half of their objects are Australian art. Their digital collection contains more than 18,000 images across different types, media and origins.
The V&A Museum houses more than 1.1 million objects and works of art in their collections. Their digital collection currently contains more than 450,000 images covering a wide range of topics, which include ceramics, fashion, furniture, glass, metalwork, paintings, photographs, prints, sculpture, and textiles.
Consists of two museums, de Young and Legion of Honor, the FAMSF contain 150,000 objects in their permanent collection. More than 90% of their collection were digitised and made available through their website. Users are able to search or browse the collection by object type, century, country and department.
Driven by the LOC Prints & Photographs Division, PPOC contains catalog records and digital images from their holdings. These includes photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings.
Atlas is an online database that provides images and information of the works exhibited at the Louvre Museum in English language. To date, there are approximately 30,000 items in Atlas.
As one of the largest museums in the world, the Metropolitan Museum (MET) provides access to more than 400,000 high-resolution digital images of public domain works across different periods and geographic locations. Such works can be downloaded directly from the Museum’s website for non-commercial use—including in scholarly publications in any media—without permission from the Museum and without a fee.
NGA Images is an online repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. The Gallery has one of the finest art collections in the world with works spanning from the Middle Ages to present day. Their strongest collection is the Italian Renaissance collection, which includes masterpieces from Raphael, Titian, Filippo Lippi and Giovanni Bellini. Through NGA Images, more than 37,000 digital images are available free of charge for download and use.
