♦ F&M Subscription Databases ♦ General Collections ♦ Architecture & Landscape ♦
♦ Art & Art History ♦ Artists' Books & Zines ♦ Free Stock Photography ♦ Fashion, Textiles, & Design ♦
♦ Photography & Photo Archives ♦ Science & Technology ♦ Free Stock Photography ♦
By NO MEANS is the below list exhaustive. Please explore the general image collections, as they often encompass various subject matter.
Cranach Digital Archive. Access to art historical, technical, and conservation information on paintings by Lucas Cranach (c. 1472-1553), his sons, and workshop. The archive contains over 12,000 images. (An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation project.)
F&M Visual Resources Collection. A curated collection of curriculum-relevant images for teaching, study, and scholarship. Please note, some material is accessible only with F&M net ID.
Getty Open Content Program. The J. Paul Getty Trust makes available, without charge, all available digital images to which it holds the rights or that are in the public domain. No permission from the Getty is required to use them. All of the images can be found on the Getty Search Gateway. Open Content images are identified with a "Download" link. Detailed information about the Program is located here.
Google Cultural Institute. Collections and exhibits from museums and archives around the world presented in extraordinary detail.
Collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Over 20,000 public domain images from the museum's collections of world art.
National Gallery of Art Free and Downloadable Images.
Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Collection Online. Well over 400,000 images of objects in the museum's collections. Those believed to be in the public domain and free of other known restrictions are marked OASC (Open Access for Scholarly Content). Detailed information about OASC can be found here.
The Rembrandt Database. A Mellon-funded project about 205 Rembrandt paintings.
Smithsonian Archives of American Art Image Gallery. Over 8000 photographs of artists and art-world figures, letters, sketches and sketchbooks, diaries, printed materials, ephemera, and other documents from the Archives' collections.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Artist' Book Collection.
F&M Artists' Books Collection.
Library of Congress Zine Web Archive
American Society for Cell Biology Image Library. Public repository of annotated images, videos, and animations of cells from a variety of organisms.
Centers for Disease Control Public Health Image Library. Gateway to photographs, illustrations, and videos for reference, teaching, and presentation. Organized by people, places, and science.
Images from the History of Medicine. 70,000+ images from the collection of the History of Medicine Division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Includes portraits, pictures of institutions, caricatures, genre scenes, and graphic art of the social and historical aspects of medicine.
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Photo Library. Weather, space, coastlines, marine species, ocean exploration, and polar regions, plus hundreds of photographs documenting the damage done by Hurricane Katrina.
USDA Agricultural Resource Image Gallery. More than 40,000 photographs and line drawings of United States plants.
Here, find various collections of images made freely available online from leading higher education institutions and museums. Please pay attention to rights statements on individual images.
Clark Art Institute. Browse continually updated images of works in the Clark's collection, and note that they are completely open access and can be used for any purpose without prior permission of the Clark.
Digital Public Library of America. Scroll to the bottom of the home page, click on Subjects, choose a subject, refine search by format, and choose images.
Europeana. Collections from museums, libraries, archives, and galleries across Europe. Find the copyright status of items under "Can I Use It?"
Harvard University HOLLIS Images. Union catalog of visual resources at Harvard focusing on artistic and cultural materials. Some records allow access to larger-scale images for education and scholarship.
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Collection. Over one million digitized images representing a rich cross-section of still pictures held by the Library of Congress.
The New York Public Library Digital Collections. Nearly 850,000 items digitized from The New York Public Library collections. Incorporates the Library's renowned Mid-Manhattan Branch Picture Collection. Click here for information about using the images.
Yale Digital Content. Cross-collection searching of art, natural history, maps, and photos from Yale University's Peabody Museum, Center for British Art, Art Gallery, and University Library Digital Collections.
Public Domain Review Image Archive. Explore hand-picked collection of 10,046 out-of-copyright works, free for all to browse, download, and reuse. This is a living database with new images added every week.
Metropolitan Museum of Art - Open Access Images. Browse more than 492,000 Open Access works in The Online Collection by selecting the Open Access filter in search.
Smithsonian Open Access Initiative
Chartres Cathedral. A collection of 4,000 images with detailed descriptions of Chartres Cathedral. Hosted by the Digital Research Library at the University of Pittsburgh.
The Cultural Landscape Foundation: "What's Out There". North America's designed landscape legacy in 10,000 images. For public/noncommercial use.
RIBApix. Images from the collections of the British Architectural Library at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the world's most extensive visual archive devoted to architecture. Covers world architecture of all periods as well as interior design, landscape, topography, planning, construction, and decorative art. Many images are of social documentary significance.
Andre Studios, 1930-1941: Fashion Drawings & Sketches. Collection of fashion drawings from the Fashion Institute of Technology and The New York Public Library showing original, hand-colored fashion drawings. Extraordinary visual documentation of the American fashion industry in the early 20th century.
Europeana Fashion. Online fashion archive providing access to digital fashion and costume collections across Europe. The 700,000+ objects include clothing, accessories, photographs, posters, and illustrations. Also on the site is a downloadable Fashion and Intellectual Property 'Best practice' Guidelines pdf to assist site users with managing intellectual property rights for fashion images.
Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection. Open access to images of more than 9,000 items in the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Especially strong in ethnographic textiles and 19th- and 20th-century American and European home furnishing and apparel fabrics.
Textile Museum of Canada. Images of thousands of objects from the Museum's collection, representing 2,000 years of history and cultural traditions around the world.
Victoria and Albert Museum. Well over one-half million images from the V&A's collections, including ceramics, fashion, furniture, glass, metalwork, paintings, photographs, prints, sculpture, and textiles.
Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) for British Design. Portfolios of images (100,000+) from UK universities, museums, and archives. Contents include fashion, design, material culture, furniture, craft, political posters, and prints.
George Grantham Bain Collection. Photographs from one of the first American news picture agencies, mostly representing life in New York in the 1900s-1920s: working people, street scenes, celebrities, theater openings, and cultural and social events. Unrestricted use.
LIFE Photo Archive. Millions of historic photographs from the LIFE photo archive spanning the 1860s through 1970s. Categorized by decade and also by people, places, events, sports, and culture.
Pictures of the Civil War. Photographs from the National Archives and Records Administration, including items fro the Matthew Brady collection.
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Most of the web sites on this guide include information about how their images can be used.
Please use the images according to their associated rights and reproductions policies.
Policies vary widely, so be alert to differences.
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Image descriptions and sources, top to bottom and left to right:
Edvard Munch, Aftenpassiar, 1889. europeana.eu | Lorenzo Ghiberti (circle of), Reliquary Casket, 1446. metmuseum.org | Louis Prang & Co., Junionia Orithyia from The Butterflies and Moths of America Part 1, 1860. metmuseum.org | Jackie Robinson comic book, 1951. memory.loc.gov | Suffragette procession, 1911. digitalgallery.nypl.org | Witchery of Kodakery magazine advertisement, 1909. memory.loc.gov | Anonymous (Italian), Architectural Drawing, 19th c. metmuseum.org | Maison Bury, Maastricht, Netherlands, 1925. europeana.eu | Cathedral of Notre-Dame north transept, Chartres, France, ca. 1194-1230. images.library.pitt.edu/c/chartres | Kathleen Cohen, Tuareg women in flowing garments, Djanet, Algeria, 2006. worldimages.sjsu.edu | Iraq map - current situation (June 12, 2014). lib.utexas.edu/maps | Boys in naval-style military uniform, ca. 1890-1900. visualisingchina.net | John Singer Sargent, Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), 1883-84. metmuseum.org | Joseph Siffred Duplessis, Benjamin Franklin, 1778. metmuseum.org | Hans Memling, The Annunciation, ca. 1465-70. metmuseum.org | Louise Odes Neaderland, Empress bullet: an allegory, 1982. digital-libraries.saic.edu | Sally Alatalo, A rearranged affair, 1996. digital-libraries.saic.edu | Susan Happersett, The ABCs of beauty, 2006. digital-libraries.saic.edu | Cristóbal Balenciaga, Evening Dress, Paris, 1955. europeana.eu. | Margaretha Helm, Designs for Embroidered Shoes, ca. 1725. europeana.eu | Charles Frederick Worth, Hell or Nightmare, Paris, 1860s. europeana.eu | Lynn Pelham, Civil rights leaders singing during voter registration march, Mississippi, 1966. images.google.com/hosted/life | World War II. images.google.com/hosted/life | Mohandas Ghandi, India, 1940. images.google/hosted/life | Thalassoma purpureum (Forskal) from The Shore Fishes of the Hawaiian Islands, 1903. photolib.noaa.gov | Coral exoskeleton. photolib.noaa.gov | African dwarf frog. phil.cdc.gov
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Original guide authored by: Louise Kulp
Please contact ask.us@fandm.edu with any questions.