Library : Finding Images: Museums

Image Collections from Museums

Google Arts and Culture
Why? To explore art movements, museum collections, artists, and interactive models of famous buildings, or play art-related games via a site developed by the Google Cultural Institute in partnership with 2,000 museums worldwide
What? Interactive modules, video, and images
American Museum of Natural History Digital Collection
Why? To browse 50,000+ photographs of historical expeditions, exhibit construction, and items in the museum's vast collection
What? Images
When? 1890 - 1941

Smithsonian Open Access
155 million artifacts, works of art, and specimens in the Smithsonian's collections. Most items are fully open access -- Which means that you can download and use the files in whatever way you wish without requesting express permission from the organization.
Courtauld Institute of Art
The Art & Architecture website has over 40,000 works from the Courtauld's collections.
Getty Art
Thousands of images of artworks are available for download, without charge, under the Getty's Open Content Program.
Kress Foundation Collection
Kress Foundation holds medieval through baroque fine master works.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Over 400,000 works of art and design that can be refined by artist, object type/material, geography, date, and department. Most are Open Access.
Museum of Modern Art Collection
MoMA’s evolving collection contains almost 200,000 works of modern and contemporary art and design by over 10,000 artists. 66,000 works are available online.
National Gallery of Art
Browse or search for paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, and other works in the collection.
Paris Museums
Open access images from the Paris municipal museums including the Petit Palais (decorative arts) and Musee Carnavalet (Paris history); works include books, prints, drawings, paintings, more.