Research Guides: Art: Home

Article Databases

Art & Architecture Source This link opens in a new window
EBSCO - Covers fine, decorative and commercial art, as well as architecture and architectural design. With strong international coverage, it offers hundreds of full-text art journals, magazines and books, plus detailed indexing and abstracts and thousands of images.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Contains over 1,300 full-text scholarly journals. Coverage begins one to seven years after original publication so this source is usable only for back issues.
Arts & Humanities Database This link opens in a new window
ProQuest - Art, Architecture, Design, History, Philosophy, Music, Literature, Theatre and Cultural Studies.
Fine Arts (OneFile) This link opens in a new window
GALE - Includes drama, music, art history, and film making. The database emphasizes full-text content for publications included in the Wilson Art Index and RILM bibliography.
Arts & Humanities Commons This link opens in a new window
Arts & Humanities Commons is an Open Access repository of humanities literature from universities all over the world. Search by keyword, browse by discipline, or view by institution.

Images & Video

Images from JSTOR formerly ArtStor This link opens in a new window
A digital library of over 1 million images from a wide range of cultures and time periods and historical photographs from around the world. Now searchable from within JSTOR.
Alexander Street Press This link opens in a new window
ProQuest - Multidisciplinary streaming video and music collections including history, art, business, law, dance, education, healthcare, music, science, and more.

Art and Architecture Video Online
Alexander Street Press. Delivers over 500 hours of documentaries and interviews illustrating the theory and practice of a variety of art forms and providing the context necessary for critical analysis.
CC Search
Tool that searches over 300 million images from publicly available repositories of open content, including Europeana, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Public Library, Rijksmuseum, Cleveland Museum of Art, and more.

Reference Sources

Oxford Art and Architecture Reference Books Online
Oxford University Press - Some titles are available in paper: The Encyclopedia of aesthetics is at REF BH56.E53 1998, The Grove encyclopedia of classical art and architecture is at REF N5610.G76 2007, The Grove encyclopedia of decorative arts is at REF NK28.G76 2006.
Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art
Oxford University Press. Contains historical and current materials and methods in a wide range of media, including artifacts, conservation, tools, and forgery. The online version of the printed encyclopedia.
ArtSource
A gathering of selected network resources on art and architecture.
Source: Interactive Learning Paradigms, Inc.
OWL: Online Writing Lab, Purdue University
Helps for punctuation, sentence structure, parts of speech, spelling, research writing styles, resumes and more.
Bibliography of the History of Art
Indexes and abstracts journal articles, books,exhibition catalogs, conference proceedings and dissertations on fine and applied arts and architecture.
Topical coverage includes European art since late antiquity and American art since European discovery and settlement. Asian, African, and most tribal arts are not included.
History of Art Bibliography
Open access to all the bibliographical references from the Répertoire d'Art et d'Archéologie and from the Bibliographie d'Histoire de l'Art. Includes materials from multiple languages.

Whitworth Collections

Art Department
Provides information about the department, program offerings, career opportunities and faculty. The site also has a link to online galleries.
Whitworth Permanent Art Collection
Circulation of art pieces is handled by Whitworth Art Department

Student Research at Peer Institutions

UO Art History Theses & Dissertations (Scholars Bank)

Scholars Bank is the University of Oregon digital repository. Art & Architecture History theses and dissertations in digital form can be accessed here.

Historical Image Collections

New York Public Library Digital Gallery
800,000 photographs, posters, manuscripts digitized, searchable and free to research.
Denver Public Library Digital Collections
Maps, drawings, broadsides, photographs and more from the Denver Public Library Western History Collection.
American Memory Photograph Collections
Library of Congress digitized photographs and links to other collections throughout the country
Yale Center for British Art
Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture
Public access to the digitized collections including art, photographs, texts, and more.
Art Images for College Teaching
Site for image resources exchange which contains style categories and descriptive information. Good for architectural style.
Source: Allan T. Kohl
Smithsonian Open Access
Download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian's 2D and 3D images. Content from museums, research centers, libraries, archives and the National Zoo.
Rijks Studio - from Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
Create your own "collection" from works digitized for the public domain.
The Met Collection
Explore nearly half a million works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection.
Art Institute of Chicago
Explore thousands of artworks in the museum’s wide-ranging collection—from world-renowned icons to lesser-known gems from every corner of the globe—as well as books, writings, reference materials, and other resources.
Cleveland Museum of Art
An Open Access selection of the museum's collection, includes American artists as well as van Gogh, Degas, Monet, Cézanne and more.
Les Musées de la Ville de Paris
Browse or search over 300,000 works by theme, artist, technique, date, color, or museum collection. Almost half are in the public domain.
Frick Digital Collections
The collections include photo archive images and documentation, book materials, Frick Collection images, and archival documents.
Getty Museum Collection
100,000+ high resolution, reproduction-quality digital images of artworks from the J. Paul Getty Museum collections available for download with embedded metadata. Includes: Foto Arte Minore collection of 72,000 Max Hutzel photographs of art and architecture in Italy and nearly 5000 images of 15th-18th century tapestries.

Contemporary Art Blogs

ART21

The ART21 website provides access to films, publications, digital resources, and educational programs produced by ART21, a nonprofit contemporary art organization dedicated to introducing broad public audiences to today’s visual artists—stimulating critical reflection as well as conversation.

Artsy Artsy

Artsy features the world’s leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions, all in one place. Their website claims that their growing database of 280,000 images of art, architecture, and design by 40,000 artists spans historical, modern, and contemporary works, and includes the largest online database of contemporary art.

Colossal

Launched in 2010, Colossal is a blog that explores art and other aspects of visual culture. Each week you’ll find 15-25 posts on photography, design, animation, painting, installation art, architecture, drawing, and street art. Colossal is also a great place to learn about the intersection of art and science as well as the beauty of the natural world.

Rhizome

The Rhizome website is a dynamic, interactive platform, rich in historical resources and updated continually with new art and commentary by a vast community. The Rhizome ArtBase is an online archive of digital art containing over 2,500 art works.

(Thanks to the UO Design Library for the sharing of this great content).

Art