Digital Image Collections
>Pratt Visual
Resources Center recommended websites for free access to high resolution images
for teaching and study
Ad*Access Project (http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/)
Images
and information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in
American Memory: Historical
Collections for the National Digital Library (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html)
Consists
of more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical Library of
Congress collections. The primary source and archival materials relating in the
project cover topics from art and architecture to performing arts to technology
and applied sciences.
Includes
over 5,000 images from daguerreotype portraits to Ansel Adams.
ArchNet Digital Library (http://archnet.org/library)
Online
resource for ArchNet, an online community devoted to the study of Islamic
architecture, art, and culture. Developed at the
Archives of American Art (http://www.aaa.si.edu)
Collection
of primary source documentation on American visual arts.
ArtServe,
This site
provides thousands of images (including panoramas) of art and architecture,
primarily of the
Art Images (http://arthist.cla.umn.edu/aict)
Art
Images for College Teaching is a personal, non-profit resource created by Allan
T. Kohl, visual resources curator at the Minneapolis College of Art and
Design-- all photographs were taken by Allan. Most of the images have
references to pages of major art history textbooks where the work is mentioned.
Buildings & Structures
Galleries (http://www.cupola.com/bldgstr1.htm)
An image
site with photographs of structures from around the world. Search by
architectural period.
Calisphere (http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu)
Gateway
to digitized images from the libraries and museums of 10
Cities and Buildings Database (http://content.lib.washington.edu/buildingsweb/index.html)
A collection
of over 5000 digitized images of buildings and cities drawn from across time
and throughout the world ranging from New York to Central Asia, from African
villages to the Parc de la Villette. Users can now search for buildings by
country, city, style, title, architect, date of construction, as well as other
fields.
Cities Around the World (http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/digilib/cities)
A
database of over 6,000 digital images representing over 450 cities from the
photographic collections of Harrison Forman and Harold Mayer.
CORSAIR (http://corsair.morganlibrary.org/ICAIntro/ICAintroshortdesc.htm)
CORSAIR
currently offers more than twenty thousand medieval images from the Pierpoint
Morgan Library’s renowned collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts.
The Digital Images Collections
Wiki (http://digital-image-collections.wikispaces.com/)
The
Digital Images Collections Wiki is a great resource of Free- and Fair-Use
digital image collections that are available for anyone to use.
Digital Imaging Project (Professor Mary Ann Sullivan) (http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm)
14,000 images
of sculpture and architecture from around the world.
Digital Scriptorium (http://www.scriptorium.columbia.edu)
An image
database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts. Among the participating
institutions to this project are the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley,
Digital
On-line
information about contemporary and historical South Asia – including full-text
documents, statistical data, electronic images, cartographic representations,
and pedagogical resources for language instruction.
Ditto (http://www.ditto.com/default.aspx)
A visual
search engine. Ditto enables people to navigate the Web through pictures.
Flickr Groups (http://www.flickr.com/groups)
Flickr
Groups are themed image collections created by members of the Flickr
photograph-sharing community. There are thousands of Flickr Groups, and more
are created daily. The size and quality of images within the groups varies, but
overall I am impressed with the images I find there. Copyright protection
varies by photographer. A very popular protection on the site is the Creative
Commons license, which allows anyone to use, distribute, and change the
photograph as long as attribution is given to the creator. To the right of each
photograph the copyright information is displayed. (Example is the “Renaissance” group with 1300+ images).
Godden Structural Engineering
Slide Library (http://nisee.berkeley.edu/godden)
Contains
1000 images based on Professor William G. Godden's 30 years of teaching
structural analysis, structural design, and architectural engineering, during
which time he photographed many structures throughout the world for the express
purpose of illustrating particular facets of structural theory, response, or
design.
Google Image Search (http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en)
Billions
of images found on web pages. Some may be protected by copyright.
Great Buildings Online (http://www.greatbuildings.com/gbc/buildings.html)
Gateway
to architecture around the world and across history. Documents 1000 buildings
and hundreds of leading architects.
Helios: Photography Online (http://americanart.si.edu/collections/exhibits/helios/index.html)
Online
collections ofmore than 1500 images from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Photography Collection.
La Fayette: Database of American
Art (http://musee.louvre.fr/bases/lafayette/?lng=1)
This
bilingual online catalogue presents more than 1,700 works produced by
Kidder Smith Slide Archives on
American Architecture
(http://libraries.mit.edu/rvc/kidder)
Selected
images from the 3400 slides in the Kidder Smith Slide Archives at MIT. The
slide archive systematically covers 805 buildings from the pre-Columbian period
to 1978 and includes sequences of 6 to 10 or more slides for some buildings.
Approximately 2000 of the slides document mid- and late- 20th century
buildings, with special attention to the 1950s and 1960s.
Images of
NYPL Digital Gallery (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm)
Catalog
of digital images. Provides access to over 275,000 images digitized from
primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public
Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters,
rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.
NYPL Digital
Image Collections (http://www.nypl.org/digital/collections_images.html)
Same material
as above, but in list format. The image collections are listed and content can
be browsed rather than searched as above.
Perseus Digital Library (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu)
(Some
full text)
A
collection of more than 500 primary and secondary texts on the study of ancient
Prints &
Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) (http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html)
The
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division’s catalog to about 65% of
the Division's holdings. Many of the catalog records are accompanied by digital
images--about one million digital images in all.
Skyscrapers.com (http://www.skyscrapers.com)
A
searchable database with images and statistics to over 80,000 high-rise
buildings from around the world. (The images may not be downloaded.)
SPIRO database - Architectural
Visual Resources Library (http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/spiro)
The
visual online catalog of UC Berkeley's Architecture Visual Resources Library
(AVRL). Images in SPIRO are copyrighted and for educational use ONLY. The AVRL
collection numbers over 275,000 35mm slides, 20,000 photographs, and 75,000
digital images.
UW Libraries Digital Collections (http://content.lib.washington.edu/index.html)
Image
collections of the
Vitruvio (http://www.vitruvio.ch)
A
searchable database of historical and contemporary architecture. Text is in
Italian.
Museum Collections
>access to a
selection of images from the collections of major museums
Art
online
collection offering access to over 25,000 works from the Art Institute of
Chicago’s permanent collection.
Atlas: Database of Works on
Display in the Louvre
(http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=crt_frm_rs&langue=fr&initCritere=true)
Atlas
allows the direct online consultation of 35,000 works of art exhibited in the
Louvre. Must search in French.
The
6,000+
images. Museum holds objects and artworks dating from the 7th millennium BC to
the present day, and covers all major world cultures.
The
Browse by artist, type of artist, or medium.
Selections from the collection. Browse by artist, movement, title, medium,
date, concept, museum (including Guggenheim Bilbao and the Peggy Guggenheim
Collection).
Over 67,000 items accessible online (about 1/2 of the collection).
Several searchable databases including Atlas: Database of Works on Display in
the Louvre; Inventory of the Department of Prints and Drawings; La Fayette:
Database of American Art and more.
Metropolitan
(http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/index.aspx?dep=0&vw=1)
Browse
through images of more than 33,000+ artworks from the Metropolitan's permanent
collection, or search for information on a specific work.
MoMA Online Collections (http://www.moma.org/collection/search.php)
The
Musée
d’Orsay, Paris, France (http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/overview.html?S=0)
A national,
multidisciplinary museum. The national museum of the Musée d'Orsay opened to
the public in 1986 to show the great diversity of artistic creation in the
western world between 1848 and 1914.
National Gallery of Art,
A great set of resources. From the “Collection Explorer” to the searchable,
“Full Collection Index.”
National Gallery of Art,
Search by by artist, title, subject, expanded search, provenance, or accession
number for information from a database of the entire collection.
National Portrait Gallery (
50,000+ images. Search by artist, sitter, portrait.
National Portrait Gallery's
Portrait Search (http://npgportraits.si.edu/eMuseumNPG/code/emuseum.asp)
Search
more than 80,000 records from the Catalog of American Portraits.
Search over 3000 objects by keyword. If needed, click the “options” link to
limit by artist, classification, and origin of work.
Smithsonian Image Gallery (http://sirismm.si.edu/siris/sirisimagegallery.htm)
The SIRIS
Image Gallery contains a sampling of visual records that are part of the
Smithsonian Institution Research Information System's main catalog. The Image
Gallery includes over 138,000 electronic images from several archival
repositories and museums at the Smithsonian.
The
This is the “digital collection.” Note that you can query the database by using
IBM’s Query By Image Content (QBIC) technology including by color and layout.
>For further
assistance and a more comprehensive overview of resources available to Pratt
faculty, staff and students, contact or visit the
The Visual Resources Center, a division of the Pratt Institute
Libraries, is located on the 3rd floor of the Brooklyn Campus Library. It
houses a collection of over 160,000 architecture, art and design color slides,
a growing digital collection, a copy stand with a 35mm camera and a digital SLR
camera, and scanning workstations.