Guides: Art History: Websites

Museums and Galleries Online

Art Institute of Chicago
Collections consist of nearly 300,000 works of art in fields ranging from Chinese bronzes to contemporary design and from textiles to installation art. Interpretive resources are available and the online collections can be searched by theme, category, or type.
British Museum
The world's first national public museum, the collections of the British museum consist of art and artefacts from around the world. Their online collections search contains over 4 million objects.
J. Paul Getty Museum
The Getty conserves, exhibits, collects and interprets works of visual art. Major collection areas include antiquities, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, and sculpture & decorative arts.
Louvre
One of the world's greatest art collections, the objects in the Louvre span centuries and continents. There are a number of online databases about specific collections and thematic selections of objects. Visitor tours are also available.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met's collections spans ancient and contemporary art. Online resources include a timeline of art history, searchable collection highlights, and 375,000 high-res public domain images of objects in the collection.
Musei Vaticani
The Vatican museums contain the works of art which the popes have collected over the centuries. Collection highlights are available for each of the different museums and there is also an online catalogue.
Museo Nacional del Prado
A collection of European art which ranges from the 12th to the 19th century, it is sometimes described as a museum of painters. Over a thousand paintings are available to view online.
Museu de Arte de São Paulo
One of the most extensive art museums in South America, the Museu de Arte contains over 10,000 works of art from all over the world about 2,000 of which are available to view online.
Museum of Modern Art
MoMA showcases and shares modern and contemporary art. Their collection contains over 200,000 works of art, of which 79,000+ are online.
Musée d'Orsay
The collection focuses on French art from 1848 to 1915, including the world's largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. There is a section of collection highlights. Viewers need to have Flash Player enabled to use the 'Discovery' feature.
National Bardo Museum
The Bardo contains the world's largest collection of mosaics, as well as collections relating to the history of Tunisia from prehistory to the modern day.
National Gallery of Art
Users can search the National Gallery's collections and view online images of art works and virtual tours are also available. The 'Online Editions' section offers in-depth commentary on particular themes and topics.
Smithsonian
Including nineteen museums and a zoo, the Smithsonian's collections include an enormous range of objects and a fully searchable digital collection.
State Hermitage Museum
Contains over three million works of art and artefacts; the website offers a virtual tour of the museum and a searchable online collection.
Tate
The museums of the Tate Collective focus on modern and contemporary art as well as British art. Over 70,000 works of art can be viewed online and their digital archive contains artists' personal papers, photographs and correspondence.
Tokyo National Museum
A significant collection of art and antiquities from Japan and other Asian countries. An e-museum with photos of objects from the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage collections is available.
Victoria and Albert Museum
The V&A is a world-leading museum of art and design and the extensive online collections can be searched explored by theme, material and technique, place, etc

VADS This link opens in a new window
Access to over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK.

Resources for Studying Stained Glass

Church Stained Glass Windows
This web site gives access to a database of 32,253 records of stained glass windows in 5,415 churches in the South and East of England. It contains a record and repository of Victorian and later stained glass church windows, and their makers and designers.
Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (CVMA)
The Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (CVMA) is the international research project dedicated to recording medieval stained glass. Here you will also find free access to their digital Picture Archive, containing more than 25,000 images, most of them in colour. In addition to images of medieval stained glass there are others from collections of national significance.
Stained Glass in Wales
This catalogue draws together hundreds of examples of the art in Wales from the fourteenth century up to the present day. These examples are searchable by date, artist, subject and location, listing about 2,700 windows with over 7,000 photographs from more than 500 sites across Wales.

Local Museums and Galleries

The Collection
Consists of two museums, one of art (the Usher Gallery) and the other of archaeology.
Lincolnshire Archives Online Catalogue
Lincs to the Past is a site that contains hundreds of thousands of records covering items held in Lincolnshire’s Historic Environment Record, Archives, Libraries, Museums and Tennyson Research Centre.

Other Useful Websites

Connected Histories
Connected Histories brings together twenty-five digital collections related to early modern and nineteenth century Britain, including British History Online, Queen Victoria's Journals, and much more.
Europeana Collections
Provides access to over fifty million digitised records of cultural heritage from thousands of European libraries, museums, and galleries, including a collections of digitised art.
Getty Research Institute
Offers access to freely available online databases and research tools for art and art history.
Google Arts and Culture
Explore the collections of museums worldwide and examine high-quality images of art and architecture.
the Index of Medieval Art
The database includes images and descriptive data related to the iconography of works of art produced between late Antiquity and the sixteenth century. Although the Index of Medieval Art was formerly known as the Index of Christian Art, it now includes secular subjects as well as a growing number of subjects from medieval Jewish and Islamic cultures.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world with a wide array of collections--books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts--relating to American and world culture and history.
Manuscripts Online Written Culture 1000 to 1500
Manuscripts Online enables you to search a diverse body of online primary resources relating to written and early printed culture in Britain during the period 1000 to 1500. The resources include literary manuscripts, historical documents and early printed books which are located on websites owned by libraries, archives, universities and publishers.
Medieval Digital Resources
A database of databases for studying the Middle Ages, useful if you are looking for resources to support work on medieval art or history.
The Montias Database of 17th Century Dutch Art Inventories
Contains information from over a thousand inventories of the possessions of people living in 17th century Amsterdam, including detailed information on the works of art they owned.
Spanish Artists from the Fourth to the Twentieth Century: A Critical Dictionary
Offers bibliographic information on more than 5,000 Spanish artists and information on variant spellings of surnames.

Visiting Other Libraries

SCONUL Access is a scheme which allows many university library users to use or borrow books and journals at other libraries which belong to the scheme. Click here to learn more about it or sign up.

Library Hub Discover and Other Library Catalogues

Before visiting another library, it's always a good idea to check their catalog to make sure the material you want to see is available. You can generally find a library's catalog with a quick internet search. If you are planning to visit multiple external libraries or aren't quite sure where to go, merged library catalogues like Library Hub Discover and WorldCat can help you plan your research.

Library Hub Discover This link opens in a new window
Jisc Library Hub Discover exposes rare and unique research material by bringing together the catalogues of major UK and Irish libraries. In a single search you can discover the holdings of the UK’s National Libraries (including the British Library), many university libraries, and specialist research libraries.

WorldCat

WorldCat is an international library catalogue. It is useful for looking for material on particular subjects and finding out in what libraries they are held. This makes it a very useful tool when you are planning a visit to another library.

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