Art: Web Resources

The Archives of American Art is dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America.

The Art Story aims to sort through all the noise of the art world and shed light on modern and contemporary art. Every one of its topic pages is meant to be an analysis that would convince the most ardent skeptic in the value of the particular artist, movement, or idea.

Discover artworks and collections from around the world.

More than 400,000 high-resolution digital images of public domain works in the Museum’s world-renowned collection may 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. The number of available images will increase as new digital files are added on a regular basis. The Metropolitan Museum’s initiative—called Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC)—provides access to images of art in its collection that the Museum believes to be in the public domain and free of other known restrictions; these images are now available for scholarly use in any media. Works that are covered by the new policy are identified on the Museum’s website with the acronym OASC.

From the University of Michigan

The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of Western (European) fine arts of the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, and Impressionism periods (1000-1900), currently containing over 38.000 reproductions. Artist biographies, commentaries, guided tours, period music, catalogue, free postcard and mobile services are provided.