Library Guides: Art, Art History, and Design: Images

Image Collections

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
Licensed subscription database featuring over 2.5 million high-resolution, color-corrected images from nearly 300 institutions.

Visual Resources Center, 1136 Hesburgh Library
Notre Dame's VRC is a teaching and learning resource for incorporating the interdisciplinary use of visual literacy and multimedia tools. Manages a digital collection of images in the arts, architecture, humanities, sciences and cultures from prehistoric times to the present. Digitizes visual materials to support teaching and research.

Additional Databases with Image Content

Index of Medieval Art This link opens in a new window
120,000 images, ranging from early apostolic times to 1550.
Title changed from Index of Christian Art.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Includes full text for over 2,000 scholarly journals and other historical documents, with its oldest content dating to the 16th century. Illustrations within articles can be found by changing the default from "full-text" to "caption."
Oxford art online This link opens in a new window
Includes 50,000 images, which can be found from a dedicated search box.

Marble
The Marble site is a collaboration between the Hesburgh Libraries and the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame. Both a teaching and a research tool, Marble facilitates cross-institutional browsing and serendipitous discovery of materials from the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, Rare Books & Special Collections, and the University Archives. Access to a selection of distinctive cultural heritage materials is free and open to the public. Visit us often to see new materials and featured portfolios.

Image Collections (Free Websites)

Flickr Commons
Includes images with “no known copyright restrictions” contributed by more than 100 libraries, archives, and museums.
Getty Open Content Program
Makes freely available nearly 100,000 digital images to which the Getty Museum holds the rights or that are in the public domain
Google Arts and Culture
Google Arts & Culture is an online platform for high-resolution images of artworks housed in the initiative's partner museums
Google Images
Searches the web for image content.
Indiana Historical Society
Includes 60,000 digital images.
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
Provides access to records and digital images of pictures held by the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.
National Gallery of Art
Repository of 45,000 open access digital images from the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Over 700,000 items digitized from the New York Public Library's collection.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Provides online access to nearly 475,000 images of art and design objects from its collections.
Visual Arts Data Service (VADS)
Has over 140,000 high-quality images from United Kingdom collections that are copyright cleared and free for non-commercial use in education and research.
Web Gallery of Art
Has 35,000 high-resolution images of European visual art created prior to 1900, with special concentrations in Baroque, Gothic, and Renaissance artworks.

Reverse Image Searching

Tineye
Reverse search engine for images. Enables the discovery of similar items, which might be in higher resolution, or could provide additional information about the image.

Illustrations in Print Publications

Locating illustrations in print volumes can be as simple as searching the ND Catalog for an artist's name. Obscure artworks can require ingenuity, however, since there is no comprehensive master index.

Sometimes the captions identifying illustrations can be retrieved by searching Google Books.
Pictures published in print journals may be listed explicitly in periodical indexes.
In JSTOR, captions can be searched by changing the default dropdown from "Full-text" to "Caption."
In the library catalog, search a phrase such as "saints in art" or "food in art."
In the library catalog, search a topic with the words "pictorial works," e.g. "clothing pictorial works."

Notre Dame Art Galleries

Snite Museum of Art

Raclin Murphy Museum of Art
Raclin Murphy Museum of Art offers many events and resources to help gain exposure into the arts.

A Guide to the Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana. by Snite Museum of Art
Call Number: N 635 .A8
Publication Date: 1981
Selected Works from the Snite Museum of Art, the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana by Snite Museum of Art
Call Number: N 635 .A69 1987
Publication Date: 1987

Art, Art History, and Design

Visual Arts Librarian