Finding Art Images
Use this page to find high-quality art images suitable for classroom display. Start with the top Art Image Source and work your way down.
A more general guide for digital images and audio and visual sources is also available:
Visual Resources Research Guide.
Important Note on Downloading High-quality Images: Most browsers shrink the image that displays if it is too large for your window. To make sure you are getting the highest resolution image, hover over the lower right corner of the image with your mouse. If you see a zoom button (Internet Explorer) or if the mouse appears as a plus sign (Firefox), click there to display the full-size image. Then to download, right-click (or on a Macintosh Ctrl-click) the image and select Save as.
Art Image Sources:
ARTstor - Library database listed on the Art and Art History databases page. Very high quality images. Offers display tools with zoom and pan capabilities. This resource is made available to the SUNY Cortland community solely for educational and scholarly uses that are noncommercial in nature.
SUNY Dspace - SUNY-wide repository that includes 2 image collections: Cortland's Saskia Textbook Superset (Expanded) and Binghamton's Visual Resources Collection Note for Dspace users: Click the title or thumbnail to see the record, then click View/Open for the full-size image. See Important Note on Downloading to ensure you get the full-size image. Images from Binghamton's image collection may be used by all SUNY faculty, staff or students for educational or research uses. Images from Cortland's Saskia image collection may be used by SUNY Cortland faculty, staff or students for educational or research use. No commercial use of these images beyond classroom use or conference presentation is permitted without special permission.
Recommended Internet Image Search Engines - See Important Note on Downloading to ensure you get the full-size image. Use the Advanced Search to specify Large sized images.- Google Images - (Advanced Search)
- Yahoo! Images Search - (Advanced Image Search)
American Memory Project - from the Library of Congress. Includes historical photos, prints, & advertisements. See Important Note on Downloading to ensure you get the full-size image. Publically available, mostly copyright-free images and recordings. Mostly American items owned by the Library of Congress. You can see all collections organized by subject, or find collections containing "Photos, Prints" on Browse page. Library of Congress also offers a Prints & Photographs Online Catalog which overlaps some with American Memory Project content (be careful of copyright restrictions). They also have a very good How To page.
ImageBase - (fee-based images) - from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: 82,000 images available at varying resolutions. Images may be used for one-time educational or personal research uses; if they will be used more than once for SUNY Cortland research or teaching, please contact Lisa Joyce in the Art Department about the possibility of purchasing the image for SUNY Cortland.
Online Archive of California Image Finder - or OAC, an initiative of the California Digital Library: Tens of thousands of photographs, paintings, graphical materials and other types of images. Quality and resolution varies. You may reproduce a single copy (print or download) of materials from this website without prior permission for use in research, teaching, and private study
SILS Art Image Browser - from University of Michigan School of Information & Library Studies: Search does not work, but you can Browse by Artist, Nationality, Medium, and many other categories.
Grove Art Online - The premier art encyclopedia; contains some images and links to images. Library database listed on the Art and Art History databases page.
AP MultiMedia Archive - Not primarily art pictures, but contains historical photos. Library database listed on the Art and Art History databases page. Multimedia Archive is an educational product and may not be used for commercial purposes. Students and faculty are encouraged to print and download images for papers, presentations, and student and faculty web sites. However, use in yearbooks, newspapers, playbills or promotional items are not permitted under our license.
Search engines & image search pages:
If you download images from the web, see Important Note on Downloading to ensure you get the full-size image.
The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) Libraries have collected relevant links on a useful page: Image Searching & Image Collections on the Web
Image web sites:
Image search engines:
- Google Images - (Advanced Search)
- Yahoo! Images Search - (Advanced Image Search)
- alltheweb Pictures
- Lycos Multimedia Search
You can find more image search tools and information on using images in our Visual Resources Research Guide.
Note on Fee-based Image Sources: Some images may only be downloaded or used after a fee has been paid. If you are a student and plan to use a fee-based image for course display, you will need to pay for the image yourself. You may speak to your instructor if you think the image is something the department should have on hand. If you will be using a certain image for SUNY Cortland teaching or research, and a fee is involved, contact Lisa Joyce, Visual Resources Collection Curator for the Art & Art History Department.
If you have any remaining questions, please contact the Reference Desk in Memorial Library:
IM: cortlandrefdesk,
phone: (607) 753-2590 or X2820.
Finding Art Images guide prepared by Julia E. Schult, January 2006