Research Guides: Images: Art & Architecture

Architectural Images: Buildings and Structures

Visual Resources Center: Image Resources
Database of architectural and landscape images searchable by city, county, building/site, designer/planner, category, style, and date.
RIBAPix
A growing database dedicated to "providing...exceptional and unique images from the collections of the British Architectural Library at the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Library of Congress: Gottscho-Schleisner Collection
Over 29,000 images primarily of architectural subjects, including interiors and exteriors of homes, stores, offices, factories, historic buildings, and other structures.
University of Washington Digital Collections: Cities and Buildings Database
The Cities and Buildings Database is a collection of digitized images of buildings and cities drawn from across time and throughout the world, available to students, researchers and educators on the web.
The Council of Independent Colleges Historic Campus Architecture Project
From the Council of Independent Colleges, Washington, DC.
Archnet Digital Library
Free registration. Located in MIT's Design Lab in the School of Architecture & Planning, ArchNet is a web-based international community of scholars, students, & professionals working in architecture, planning, landscape design, and the related fields. Within the Digital Library, members have full access to an extensive range of information on cities, sites, and buildings. Downloadable online resources include images, publications, and other media files such as CAD, video, and PowerPoint.
ArchINFORM
This database includes information over more than 27500 built and unrealized projects from various architects and planners. The architecture of the 20th century is the main theme of this database.
SPIRO: Architecture Slide Library Catalog
SPIRO is the visual online public access catalog to the 35mm slide collection of the Architecture Visual Resources Library (AVRL) at the University of California at Berkeley. The collection numbers over 250,000 slides and 20,000 photographs.

Visual Resources: Art

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
ARTstor is a digital library that contains about a million art, architecture, archeology, and humanities images, with descriptive information. Also contains images from Archvision, a core architecture collection covering important Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, 18th and 19th Century, Islamic and Modern sites, gardens, parks and works of public art.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA): Open ARTStor
Not a student, faculty or staff member on the Auraria campus? This is an "open" version of ARTStor available to one and all.
Web Gallery of Art
A virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture from 11th to mid-19th centuries. The images are meant for educational and personal purposes. They are optimized for best viewing online but not print reproduction.
ARC: Art Renewal Center
Images for online viewing only. "One of the largest on-line museums on the internet. A work in progress that features tens of thousands of high quality images of the greatest painters and sculptors in human history."
Heritage Images
A source of cultural, heritage, and fine arts images.
Smithsonian Institution Research Information System Image Gallery
More the 300,000 electronic images from a number of archival repositories and museums at the Smithsonian. Covers diverse subject areas including women in history, jewelry, postage stamps, and American gardens.
VADS: Visual Arts Data Service: The online resource for visual arts
VADS provides services to the academic community and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections comprising over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK. VADS offers advice and guidance to the visual arts research, teaching and learning communities on all aspects of digital resource management from funding, through delivery and use, to preservation.

Architectural Images: Landscape

Historic American Buildings Survey - Historic American Engineering Record - Historic American Landscapes Survey
These collections are among the largest and most heavily used in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. This online presentation includes digitized images of measured drawings, black-and-white photographs, color transparencies, photo captions, and written history pages. Just a few examples of the diverse content include the Pueblo of Acoma, windmills, residential structures, one-room schools, the Golden Gate Bridge, and buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
HOLLIS Images
Harvard Library's dedicated image catalog. It includes content from archives, museums, libraries, and other collections.