Art and Art History

Research guide with additional resources useful for the Museum and Exhibition Studies program.

Links to resources from arts-related organizations, Chicago-based organizations, and beyond.

Over 95,000 images of works and basic information about works of art from all areas of the Art Institute's encyclopedic collection.

Over 30,000 images of maps, manuscripts, documents, monuments, and photographs from the British Library. Includes online exhibitions and virtual books.

Searchable database of about 4.5 million objects from the Museum's collection. Freely downloadable images with Creative Commons licenses for reuse.

Nearly 20,000 images of public domain artworks in the museum are available to download. Other images may be protected by copyright.

Includes over 406,000 public domain images of artworks from The Met collection to use, share, and remix without restriction. Select "Open Access" when searching.

Over 160,000 images available from numerous cultures, spanning the Museum's encyclopedic collection. Includes historical portraits.

Over 300,000 openly available images from collections of 14 museums in Paris. Over 150,000 images in the public domain.

Searchable collection of more than 6.1 million online images, audio & videos and blog posts. The Smithsonian is the umbrella for 19 museums, including the National Museum for African American HIstory and Culture.

Provides access to more than 4.5 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.

Under the museum's "Collection" menu, search the artists represented in the museum's permanent collection, view the Midwest Photographers Project, and participate in a tagging project. View digital exhibitions under the "Exhibitions" menu.

Museum holds extensive collections of 19th-century French and American photography and 20th-century photography. Also streaming digitized films, and a blog.

Searchable collections and details about current and past exhibitions. The Center, established in 1974, is home to several major archival collections including the Weegee archive.

Links to museums in USA and beyond that support research on photography. Info about events and opportunities for photographers. Curated by the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York.

Tips and suggested resources for researching the provenance of works of art in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago

Database of more than 2.3 million records from archival inventories, sales catalogs, and dealer stock books. Focus is on European art. Search across the entire database or create your own custom search.

Includes index of Getty's Collectors' Files, Public Collections (American & British institutions, 1500-1990), and Payments to Artists (Rome, 1576-1711).

Locate primary source material about American art collectors, dealers, agents, and repositories that hold these records. Regularly updated. Maintained by the Center for the History of Collecting, Frick Art Reference Library, New York.