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Visual arts resources

  • AHDS (Arts and Humanities Data Service). VADS (The Visual Arts Data Service) which includes many Image Collections is part of the AHDS service.
  • Arlis U&K Ireland (Art Libraries Society).
  • A&A - Art & Architecture (Courtauld Institute of Art) - website of over 40,000 images; strengths: architecture, sculpture, and drawing. Register free for full facilities.
  • Art & Architecture Thesaurus Online (Getty Vocabularies).
  • Artcyclopedia - large database, searchable and browsable by artists, movements, etc.
  • Art & Design Internet resources (University of Ulster).
  • Art Design Media: Subject Centre (The Higher Education Academy)
  • Arthistoricum.net: Virtual Library for Art History: a collaborative project of several German academic institutions, providing substantial full-text information on the history of art, including a gateway to art history websites.
  • Art History Resources on the Web
  • Art History Research Centre (AHRC)
  • ARTLEX (Online Art Dictionary) - Art Terms.
  • Artlibraries.net (Virtual Catalogue for Art History). Currently, artlibraries.net gives access to more than 6 million records from a collection of specialized art libraries worldwide, including a high percentage of records for articles in periodicals, conference papers, festschriften, exhibition catalogues and exhibition books, etc. Other libraries will be added in the future. Further details of the libraries and holdings can be found on the information page.
  • Art Project by Google: explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of art works at zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces
  • Art Source
  • Art Websites (from British Library website)
  • Arts on Film (archive of moving image films). It includes all of the 450 documentary films made by the film department of the Arts Council England between 1953 and 1998 and several films produced till 2003 by the dance Department of ACE. There are plans to add more films in the future.
  • AskArt.com - (large database about American artists).
  • AXIS (British National Contemporary Visual Arts Information Service) - artists database and other information.
  • British Museum. Via the Research link you can search the Collection database. This enables you to search for holdings of images from the collections in the museum. The database will grow in size.
  • BUBL LINK subject tree - links to many arts resources on the web.
  • CHART (Computers and the History of Art). CHART is a society established in 1985 for those who have an interest in the application of computers to the study of art and design.
  • Courtauld Institute of Art
  • DACS (Design and Artists Copyright Society).
  • Digital Librarian Art page
  • Direction des Musees de France: Catalogue collectif des Bibliotheque des Musees nationaux - catalogues of major French Fine Art Libraries.
  • ECLAP e-library for performing arts: brings together Europe's most relevant performing arts content from major institutions; covers material from theatre, dance, music, cinema and film, representing performances, lessons, master classes, teaching material, etc., in the forms of videos, audio, documents, images, animations, playlists, annotations, interactive content, etc.
    Material is available through the ECLAP portal and published on Europeana (a growing portal of millions of digital items both free and subscription based).
  • Europeana: Think culture: enables people to explore the digital resources of Europe's museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. Includes paintings, music, films and books from Europe's galleries, libraries, archives and museums and contains millions of items. It promotes discovery and networking opportunities in a multilingual space where users can engage. Around 1500 institutions have contributed to Europeana. The project is funded by the European Commission in the National Library of the Netherlands Koninklijke Bibliotheek.
  • Fashion Net
  • Finding Information about Artists: useful page on the National Art Library: Victoria & Albert Museum site. Guide describes resources and standard reference works useful for finding information about artists.
  • The Getty - site of the museum, Research Institute, etc. Conducting Research page including Library Catalogue
  • Grand Tour, The: collection of historical resources including manuscripts, from 1550 to 1850. (This is a subscription database and requires you to login).
  • Henry Moore Foundation. This includes the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds.   (A Research Archive holding exhibitions, lectures, and a growing library of over 20,000 books dedicated to sculpture, especially post 1875 British scuplture.
  • The Higher Education Academy. Subject Centres: Art & Design Media (Subject Centre ADM-HEA). & Built Environment (Centre for Education - CEBE). These are subject centres to support and develop learning and teaching in art, design, media, history of art and the history of design, and the built environment in higher education.
  • Index to Print Catalogues Raisonné - Print Council of America's index to oeuvre-catalogues of prints by European and American artists.
  • Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (INHA) - French National Institute of Art History.
  • Intute: free online service "providing you with access to the best Web resources for education and research". It includes relevant sections on Arts and Creative Industries. Intute will close in July 2011 and is no longer being updated.
  • JISC MediaHub: video, images and sound resources from many different collections; click 'Log in: Search and download via direct access'
  • Kent Print Collection (University of Kent)
  • Luminous Lint - site dedicated to the History of Photography: vintage and contemporary.
  • Manuscript Collections, British Library
  • Manuscripts (Bodleian Library, Oxford)
  • Museums around the World (Virtual Library).
  • National Art Library (Victoria & Albert Museum).
  • New Exhibitions of Contemporary Art (NECA).
  • New Testament Gateway (NT Gateway) - art and film resources related to the Bible. Includes many images based on religious stories/iconography. Try using Textweek: Art Concordance link; then search by themes alphabetically or try something like the New testament/Greek bible link to locate many images representing the New Testament.
  • Oxford Art Online (formerly Grove Art Online): the "Grove Dictionary of Art" [Macmillan Dictionary of Art]. Available from Oxford Art Online, which allows you to search: Grove Art Online, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, together or as separate reference works. Access via Kent County Council Libraries - Online reference library, which provides access to many reference services. Note: You have to join the public library and log in with either your name (as on the card) and your PIN, or with your barcode number.  
  • Printmaking Links (Middle Tennessee State University) - American focus.
  • Princeton Index to Christian Art (index to archive and images of medieval art). Login with your Kent username and password.

    More about this resource

    The Princeton Index to Christian Art:

    • may be the most comprehensive database of Christian iconography in the world.
    • holds descriptive records of more than 200,000 works of art.
    • includes access to many of the images and will develop further.
    • includes resources from other collections like the collection of medieval manuscripts based at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.
    • records works of art produced without geographical limitations from early apostolic times up to 1550 AD.
    • has a particular emphasis on western art.
    • includes significant holdings from Coptic Egypt, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Syria, Armenia, and the Near East.
    • Morgan and Princeton Library projects include their manuscript holdings up to the mid-16th century.
    • 17 different media are represented, including manuscripts, metalwork, sculpture, painting, glass, etc.
  • Research Training Initiative - training resources for postgraduates in art, design and media.
  • Voice of the Shuttle - including links to resources on art, art history, and architecture.
  • Warwick Art History Web - useful web links.
  • Web Galley of Art - over 10,000 images of European art.
  • World Wide Art Resources - claims to be 'the largest arts site on the World Wide Web'.