Art+(Image+Search)

Finding Art Images
This pathfinder is designed to help find images of art works on the Web. This could include pictures of paintings, sculptures, or even pictures of architecture and reproductions of photographs. Some of the tricks for finding art images on the Web can also be used to find non art-related Web images.

Online Resources
There are countless image collections and individual art images scattered throughout the Web. Although problematic, the Internet can be the easiest way to access the image you need.

Museum Websites
Often, the websites of art museums contain an online gallery of many works found in their collection. If you know the name or location of the museum or gallery that owns the artwork you need, it is helpful to access the website of that museum, and look for an image of the artwork there. The following websites will provide you with directories of these art museums and galleries.

At this website you can browse for galleries and museums by geographic location. All museum websites indexed in Artcyclopedia provide images of many artworks held in their collection.
 * Artcyclopedia - Art Museums Worldwide **@http://www.artcyclopedia.com/museums.html

Here, you can browse or search for the websites of thousands of art galleries and museums by category. A large portion of these websites will provide images of the artworks they hold.
 * Yahoo! Directory - Museums, Galleries, and Centers ** http://dir.yahoo.com/arts/MuseumsGalleriesansCenters/

Free Online Image Indexes
The following websites are indexes that contain links to thousands of free art images. Depending on what you are looking for, each website can be searched in a variety of ways.

There are 2,600 art sites indexed within Artcyclopedia. Here, you can search for images of works by over 8,700 artists. There are numerous ways to browse the site - by artist name, by art movement, or by title.
 * Artcyclopedia ** http://www.artcyclopedia.com

This site contains over 2,000 scanned images of fine art, historical background on art and artists, theory and criticism, and rotating "gallery" exhibitions.
 * The Artchive ** http://www.artchive.com

"The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture of the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods (1150-1750), currently containing over 8,000 reproductions. Biographies, commentaries, guided tours are available."
 * The Web Gallery of Art ** @http://www.wga.hu/

Subscription-Based Image Indexes
In order to access the following websites, you must have a subscription. It is possible to sign up for a free trial. However, if you are interested in having unlimited access these websites, you should check your local library for a subscription. If the library does not have a subscription, ask a librarian for the nearest location that you can obtain access.

Grove Art Online is an "award-winning resource on every aspect of the visual arts from prehistory to the present day." This resource contains "over 3,000 images displayed in the text of articles, with over 40,000 image links to hundreds of museums and galleries around the world."
 * Grove Art Online ** http://www.groveart.com

At the Art Museum Image Gallery you can find images and related multimedia gathered from the collections of distinguished museums around the world. This resource can be searched alone or "simultaneously with other WilsonWeb databases, including Art Full Text, Art Index Retrospective, Avery Index to Art Periodicals, and Biography Reference Bank."
 * H.W. Wilson Art Museum Image Gallery ** @http://www.hwwilson.com/Databases/artmuseum.htm

Using a Search Engine
Curiously enough, perhaps the fastest and most efficient way of finding images of any kind (not just art images) on the web can be to guess what someone else will name the image, and then use a search engine to look for that name. This strategy works best with images of generic things (cats, cauldrons, trees, etc.) and with famous images (da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Van Gogh's Starry Night, etc.).

names, etc. If you find that the images returned in a search are not what you are looking for, try different combinations. You can obtain greater control of your searches by clicking on the "advanced search option." which is featured in all search engines suggested below.
 * To find art images using a search engine**, you can specify any combination of words - artist names, artwork names, museum

Boolean searching allows you to use the articles between search terms in order to broaden your search, or to make the search more specific. Boolean search terms are the word "and" (which makes results more specific), "or" (which broadens the search), and "not" (that specifies words you do not what to search for.) For example, you can search for "Van Gogh AND Starry Night", "Van Gogh OR Starry Night", or "Van Gogh NOT Starry Night."
 * Most of these search engines allow Boolean searching.**


 * The following is a list of search engines that feature image searching:**

If you are looking for an exact name, search for the words in quotation marks.
 * Google Image Search ** http://images.google.com

AltaVista does not have an advanced search option, it does allow you to search by file type, coloration, source, and size. You can use the quotation marks as described above to find exact words and phrases. Boolean searching can be quite useful here.
 * AltaVista Image Search ** []

Once again, using the "advanced search" option, you can get very specific with the words used to describe the image. You can also specify the size, site/domain, and the coloring of the image you need.
 * Yahoo! Image Search ** http://images.search.yahoo.com

Clusty specializes in making "clusters" of types of images. For example, if you search for "Starry Night", the search engine will automatically group pictures by file size, file type, name, and URL (e.g. .edu or.com). The advanced search option also lets you specify the coloring of the image you would like to retrieve.
 * Clusty Image Search ** http://images.clusty.com