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Painting I -- Fall 2017: Finding ArtWork

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Lee Krassner. Three in Two. 1956. oil on cotton duck. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York.

Digital Image Use 101 for College Students

Online Art Images

  • ARTstor (requires login) ARTstor contains over one million images covering all periods of art, architecture, and archeology including contemporary art & design.With over 60 collections, use ARTstor's capability to view and save images into a personal folder as well as make presentations. To save groups of images and to print and download images for permitted uses you will need to register. ARTstor HelpDownload Images to PowerPoint
  • Art Images for College Teaching
    Free images of art and architectural works in the pubic domain. Includes a textbook concordance to several standard art history textbooks,   allowing users to cross-reference AICT images to these books.
  • New York Public Library Digital Gallery
    A wide ranging collection of images, including the arts.
  • Smithsonian Collection Search
  • Visual Arts Data Service (VADS ) VADS is an online resource 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.
  • Web Gallery of Art
    Free virtual image museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture from 12th to mid-19th centuries.

Citing Images

Whether you found an image for a paper or project through Google Images, a library database, or in a book, be sure to cite it properly. By citing your sources you avoid plagiarism and you give credit to the creator of the image, video, or text you are using.

When citing a digital image of an artwork or highly creative work, be aware that you need to cite both the physical object information and the digital image source. The basic information for an artwork image should include:

  • Artist's name
  • Title of the work
  • Date of creation
  • Location or repository (museum or site where the work is housed)
  • ID number (museum inventory number, etc.), if applicable
  • Digital image source (name and URL of the Website, database, publication and publisher for a scanned image; photographer if applicable, etc.)
  • Date of access
  • Copyright information for the digital image (use the copyright symbol (c) if applicable)

There are different styles used to cite images. These include APA, MLA, and Chicago (Turabian is a condensed version of Chicago). Ask your professor which style to use and then check out these links to learn how to cite using the appropriate style.