You Are Here:

Tag: digital images

Art Institute of Chicago offers free High-Resolution images

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

The Art Institute of Chicago has opened up much of its digital archive to the public. Now, website users have unrestricted access to over 44,000 images  under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.
View the collection here

What this means, according to the Art Institute, is that these images can be downloaded for free on the artwork’s pages. In addition, the Institute has also enhanced image viewing capabilities on object pages, allowing viewers to see the works in greater detail.

You can explore the cryerson and Burnham Archives, search by architect or artist, or by city.

There is also a Visual Artist Oral History Archive under development. Suggested topics for the interviews include:
academic study, family background, cultural influences, gallery affiliations, exhibitions, awards, artistic influences and the role of Chicago in their work and career.  Explore the oral history archive here

Screenshot of Art Institute of Chicago website

 

375,000 public domain images now available

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

The Met and ArtStor have announced the Met is sharing open content for 375,000 images of public domain works in the ArtStor database.

Users can choose a theme or a subject in art history and gather a sampling across cultures. In portraiture, a line can be drawn from antiquity through today, and illustrated with highlights
Other advantages to the digital collection include thousands of fragile drawings and manuscripts that have been restricted or unavailable are now exposed to scholars and students. In addition, detail and alternate views present objects in their entirety, including surfaces and features that are hidden in a conventional exhibition context. The images can be viewed when you are logged in to ArtStor.

British Library offers over 1 million free vintage images for download

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

If you need some vintage visual inspiration – or a real antique elements for an illustration, design or motion project – check out the British Library’s collection of over a million copyright-free images that essentially you can do whatever you like with. The centuries-old copyright-free images range from book illustrations to photos, and cover everything from flowers to cycling and children’s books to maps.

MoMA Releases Digital Archive of over 30,000 Exhibition Images

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

The Museum of Modern Art has announced that it has released an extensive digital archive that chronicles its exhibitions from when the museum opened its doors in 1929 to today.
The archive currently features 3,542 exhibitions and is continually being updated. More than 33,000 installation photographs as well as  documents such as press releases, checklists, catalogues, and artist lists are available for viewing. There are many different ways to search the archive such as by exhibition name, dates, and type.

You can access the archive at  http://moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/history

image below is a screenshot of the  MOMA archive

 

The Corning Museum of Glass

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri
The Museum’s Glass Collection showcases more than 35 centuries of glass artistry. Their website features an extensive searchable collection with categories such as beads, science and technology, modern, and ancient.
Furthermore the library website hosts a collection of its own and collections of videos, audio, and virtual books and is a great resource for exploring more about glass.
For those of us who love looking at old pyrex patterns there is a great online collection
Screenshot from the Corning Museum of Glass Website

Metropolitan Museum Initiative Provides Free Access to 400,000 Digital Images

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

More than 400,000 high-resolution digital images of public domain works in the Museum’s world-renowned collection may be downloaded directly from the Museum’s website for non-commercial use—including in scholarly publications in any media—without permission from the Museum and without a fee. The number of available images will increase as new digital files are added on a regular basis. 

In making the announcement, Mr. Campbell said: “Through this new, open-access policy, we join a growing number of museums that provide free access to images of art in the public domain. I am delighted that digital technology can open the doors to this trove of images from our encyclopedic collection.” 

Additional information and instructions on OASC can be found on the Museum’s website at http://www.metmuseum.org/research/image-resources/frequently-asked-questions.

LA County museum makes 20,000 images available for free download

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

Two years ago LACMA made a relatively small number of its image holdings available for free download in an online library. From that beginning of 2,000 images, the museum recently expanded its downloadable collection by ten-fold, making 20,000 images of artwork available for free. This represents about a quarter of all the art represented on LACMA’s site. They’ve chosen images of artworks the museum believes to be in the public domain and developed a robust digital archive with a richer search function than most museums.

LACMA Image Collection

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

 

In this collection will find a growing body of high resolution images (between 10–40 MB) from our encyclopedic collection which we believe to be in the public domain—available without restriction, free of charge.* From ancient sculpture to Impressionist masters, from scroll paintings to Mesoamerican pottery.

This image library represents our commitment to making the breadth and depth of the museum’s collection broadly accessible online and to the widest possible audience. LACMA plans to continue adding to this library over time.

Screenshot from the LACMA Image Library website

 

Digital Image Collection wiki

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

This wiki was begun by a graduate student doing an internship at Wellesley College. It has lists of resources you can use to find a variety of images. The copyright restrictions may vary but they are usually noted on the image websites. Here is an example of one of the entries on the wiki:
“Mark Harden’s “Artchive” contains images of many essential works of art covered in any survey course. You won’t find many obscure artists or rare works here, but if you need a high-quality reproduction of one of the essentials this is an excellent resource. The site is easy to navigate by the alphabetical listing of all the artists and periods/styles on the left of the screen. Each entry has some text and a list of images towards the bottom.”