LibGuides: Finding and Using Images: Find Images

This guide discusses how to find and use images in your scholarly work.

Whether it is an image of an artwork or a chart, images can be used to support, clarify or illustrate a scholarly argument in a research paper or thesis. Sometimes they are used as a comparison, or as the focus of a critique.

As an someone working within the art world, you may find yourself using images to support your research. In many cases having images readily available alongside your text can increase the useful value of a thesis to other researchers and your readership.

This guide will show you where to look for images online and in print, explain copyright related to images, and offer guidance on citations.

Find Images in Databases

These tabs include lists of image databases that may be related to your research at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and that keep with high standards of academic and visual content.

Subscription Databases

Available to SIA MA students, staff and faculty. Conditions for use vary among the databases, and should be checked.

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
ARTstor is a comprehensive database of over a million images of art and architecture. The collection spans all mediums, cultures, and time periods.
Oxford Art Online
✅ Recommended Database Includes Grove Art Online (an online encyclopedia of the visual arts with over 45,000 articles and over 130,000 images), Oxford Companion to Western Art, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, and Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms.

View a full list of image databases here:

Image Resource Databases A-Z
An alphabetical list of image databases.

ARCHNET This link opens in a new window
An open access library for teaching and learning about the built environment of Muslim societies.
ARTstor This link opens in a new window
ARTstor is a comprehensive database of over a million images of art and architecture. The collection spans all mediums, cultures, and time periods.
Cities and Buildings Database
The Cities and Buildings Database is a collection of digitized images of buildings and cities drawn from across time and throughout the world, available to students, researchers and educators on the web.
Europeana
A search engine for the digitized collections of museums, libraries, archives and galleries across Europe.
Flickr Commons
Various cultural institutions have contributed content to the Flickr online photo management system. Images in Flickr Commons have "no known copyright restrictions".
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
The Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division's online catalog.
New York City Views
Images of New York City from the New York Public Library's Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy. Most collections search best by street and cross street.
NYPL Digital Gallery
Provides access to over 685,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
The DPLA is a platform that brings together many collections of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.
F.I.L.M. Archives, Inc.
Constantly growing library includes educational, government and industrial films; newsreels (from early 20th century through the early 1970s); silent comedies; television programs and commercials; theatrical shorts; exclusive collections of martial arts and drive-in horror movies; breathtaking travel and beauty footage shot by leading cinematographers, major news events including tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, and natural disasters, Mideast wars, political rallies and protests, economic recession and recovery, technology breakthroughs, and everyday activities.
Internet Archive Film Archive
Watch full-length feature films, classic shorts, world culture documentaries, World War II propaganda, movie trailers, and films. Many of these videos are available for free download.
Library of Congress, National Film Preservation Board
A comprehensive listing of Public Moving Image Archives and Research Centers from around the world.
UCLA Film & Television Archive
With over 300,000 films and television programs, and 27 million feet of newsreel footage, the UCLA Film & Television Archive is the world's largest university-held collection of motion pictures and broadcast programming.
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is a media repository with almost 13 million image, audio, and video files. All files are in the public domain and are freely available for educational use. The files are contributed by the general public, using the same Wiki-technology as Wikipedia.

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
ARTstor is a comprehensive database of over a million images of art and architecture. The collection spans all mediums, cultures, and time periods.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
The DPLA is a platform that brings together many collections of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.
Europeana
A search engine for the digitized collections of museums, libraries, archives and galleries across Europe.
GloPAD (Global Performing Arts Database)
Records include authoritative, detailed, multilingual descriptions of digital images, texts, video clips, sound recordings, and complex media objects related to the performing arts around the world.
Library of Congress, Federal Theatre Project
This online presentation includes over 13,000 images of items selected from the Federal Theatre Project Collection at the Library of Congress. Featured here are stage and costume designs, still photographs, posters, and scripts for productions. Also included are 68 other playscripts (6,500 images) and 168 documents selected from the Federal Theatre Project Administrative Records (3,700 images).
Library of Congress, Performing Arts Encyclopedia
The Performing Arts Encyclopedia (PAE) is a guide to performing arts resources at the Library of Congress. The PAE provides information about the Library's unsurpassed collections of scores, sheet music, audio recordings, films, photographs, and other materials.
New York Public Library, Vandamm Theatrical Photographs, 1900-1957
The Vandamm archive documents almost comprehensively three decades of theatrical history in New York.

American Memory from the Library of Congress Online This link opens in a new window
Search the photographs and prints database to access images from 67 collections. This database includes many images, some very good texts and pamphlets, and legal documents.
LRC (National Museum for Women Artists) This link opens in a new window
The National Museum of Women in the Arts' database is a unique interactive database containing authoritative information on 18,000 women visual artists of all time periods and nationalities.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
The DPLA is a platform that brings together many collections of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.
Gallica
Over 2 million digitized items from the Bibliothèque nationale de France and its partners.
The Getty Research Institute
Over 32,600 books contributed by Getty Research Institute. The Getty Research Institute is digitizing selected materials from their collection, which are free to view and download from their Digital Collection Database.
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
The Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division's online catalog.
Museum of the City of New York Collections Portal
Explore over 60,000 images of New York City.
New York City Views
Images of New York City from the New York Public Library's Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy. Most collections search best by street and cross street.
NYCity Map Portal
Multiple data resources provided by the City of New York in partnership with the Municipal Art Society, detailing local property, neighborhood, and political information.
NYPL Digital Gallery
Provides access to over 685,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.
NYPL Prints and Photographs Online Catalog
Allows patron to search for catalog records of prints and photographs held by the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, New York Public Library. Researchers can tailor their searches by various categories including the name of the artist, date, and media. The catalog is updated regularly.
VADS : Visual Arts Database
This database has over 100,000 images and a great advanced search feature.
Visual Collections: images of art, history and culture
An image database of over 300,000 images from 50 collections of art.
WikiArt
A visual encyclopedia of fine arts.The project aims to create high-quality, most complete and well-structured online repository of fine art. WikiArt.org allows unlimited copying, distributing and displaying of the images of public domain artworks solely.

Selected Museum Image Collections

Below is a selected list of museums with high quality online image collections

Finding and Using Images

Librarians