Learning Commons | Cardinal Cushing Library
Art/Art History

FAQs
 

• access databases off campus
• determine a journal's impact factor/other journal metrics
• find peer-reviewed articles
• find the full text of an article from a citation

 

• Complete Library FAQ list

= Emmanuel Faculty, Staff & Students only

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Article Databases: Ranked by Relevance

• Art Full Text
  
  • Art Full-Text provides articles from over 300 journals from 1995 to present and abstracts and indexing of more than 600 periodicals back to 1984, many of them peer-reviewed. Expanded coverage of Latin American, Canadian, Asian and non-Western art, new artists, contemporary art, exhibition reviews, and feminist criticism.
  • Art Index Retrospective indexes almost 600 titles published between 1929 and 1984.
• Humanities International Complete
  Features are literary critique content and inclusion of original works of poetry, short fiction, photography, illustrations, and artwork. This database was originally funded by a gift from the Emmanuel College Class of 2006.
• JSTOR
  A total of more than 900 full-text scholarly journal titles in an online archive beginning with the first issue of each title. The archive includes nine JSTOR Arts and Sciences Collections. In JSTOR, there is usually a time lag in full-text content. Use JSTOR in conjunction with our current online databases and print holdings. (See also Example of a Search in JSTOR )
• Project MUSE®
  Offers over 400 quality journal titles from nearly 100 not-for-profit publishers. Project MUSE® covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others.

Additionally, search in Google Scholar .

• Search for the journal title using the  A-Z Journals by Title list to verify the journals peer-reviewed status.

All FieldsTitleAuthor

 

•  Search individual E-Books Collections

Reference Books

• Grove Art Online
• Credo Reference

Local Architecture

• Boston, Massachusetts History and Architecture
  Provides descriptions and histories of public art and architecture and biographies of historical figures. Select Research Goodies for population demographics for the city and specific neighborhoods, interactive maps, and a detailed description of Trinity Church. Dave Wieneke.

American Architecture

• American Landscape and Architectural Design, 1850-1920: a Study Collection from the Harvard Graduate School of Design
  One of the many American Memory collections listed by the Library of Congress, American Landscape and Architectural Design features images of famous architectural elements across the nation, including Boston. The collection is accessible via Harvard's HOLLIS Images database.

Muslim Cultural Architecture

• Archnet
  "Officially launched in 2002 as a partnership between the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Archnet has since evolved into the largest open, online architectural library with a focus on Muslim cultures."

Worldwide Architecture

• ARCHInform
  Focusing on world-wide architecture of the 20th Century, ARCHInform "includes information over more than 68000 built and unrealized projects from various architects and planners."  

• Art History Resources on the Web
  Award-winning directory linking to all periods of art history and art in all regions of the world, maintained by Chris Witcombe, Professor, Art History, Sweet Briar College.
• Art Net
  This free resource from Grove Art Online is available off-campus. Artists’ biographies are searchable by name; selected online articles; gallery contact information for over 2,200 member galleries.
• Clara: Database of Women Artists
  A unique, interactive database maintained by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Clara contains "authoritative information on 18,000 women visual artists of all time periods and nationalities."
• Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
  An interactive resource that "comprises 300 timelines, 930 essays, close to 7,000 objects, and a robust index."  Based at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• Ancient & Medieval Studies
  Columbia University Libraries.
• Internet Medieval Sourcebook
  Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University.
• The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies
  Easy-to-use resources for all aspects of medieval studies, including text, image, and archival databases. Maintained by Georgetown University.
• The Perseus Digital Library Project
  Select Collections/Texts  in the top menu to access and explore literature, visual resources, and reference sources for the study of the ancient world. Department of Classics, Tufts University.
• Tibetan Book of the Dead: Literature and Artwork on Prayer, Ritual, and Meditation from the Religious Traditions of Tibet, India and Nepal
  Commentary on and examples of scroll paintings, statuary, and ceremonial art. Texts contains commentary on, and page samples of Sutras, Tantras, the art of dying, explanations of the Books of the Dead, biographies of afterlife experiences, and translations and interpretations of the Books of the Dead. Maintained by the Library at the University of Virginia.

• Artsy
  Artsy is the largest online collection of contemporary art, featuring 350,000 images of art, architecture, and design by 50,000 artists. Most images are freely downloadable for educational use.
• ART21
  ART21 is a nonprofit organization uses digital media to teach people of all ages about contemporary art & artists.
• Journal of Contemporary Art - Online edition
  Covering the contemporary art scene with interviews, discussions, portfolios, and projects. Archived issues are available from 1990.

General Arts Councils & Associations

• Americans for the Arts
• Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston
  
• Massachusetts Cultural Council
  
• New England Foundation for the Arts

Professional Associations

• American Society for Aesthetics
• American Watercolor Society
• Cambridge Art Association
• Graphic Artists Guild
• The Guild of Boston Artists
• The Newton Art Association
  
• AIGA: The Professional Association for Design
  

• Closer to Van Eyck: Rediscovering the Ghent Altarpiece
  An interactive digital record of the restoration of Jan Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece (completed in 1432); a collaborative project of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, Lukasweb and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, created with the help of a grant from the Getty Foundation and with support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.
• COOL: Conservation Online
  A reliable site for all types of conservation and preservation of all media.
• Getty Conservation Institute
  Art conservation efforts and research resources at the Getty.
• JAIC Online: Journal of the American Institute for Conservation
  Volume 16, 1977 - Volume 44, 2005 archived.  From The American Institute for Conservation of Historical & Artistic Works.

Color & Color Theory

• Causes of Color
  Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement (IDEA).
• Color Matters
  Explores varied aspects of the use of color: symbolism, psychology, commercial value, digital color, as well as basic color theory. Keyword searchable. J.L. Morton Graphics.
• Color: an introduction to practice and principles
  

• Harvard Art Museums
  A searchable collection of art works from Harvard’s Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Sackler Museums. Provides provenance and exhibition histories.
• Institute of Contemporary Art
  Boston, MA.
• Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
  An Emmanuel ID gains admission to regular hours of the Museum for the entire Emmanuel community; it does not gain access to special events. Boston, MA.
• Museum of Fine Arts
  Emmanuel students, faculty and staff have free general admission to the MFA with their Emmanuel IDs.
• Peabody Essex Museum
  Located in Salem, Massachusetts, the Peabody collection spans 200 years of history, representing: American Decorative Arts; Asian, Oceanic and African Arts and Culture; Asian Export Art; Early American Architecture; Maritime Art and History; Native American Art and Archaeology; and Natural History.

• American Museum of Photography
  Contains historical photographic exhibits online along with a guide to Protecting and Preserving Photographs.
• Archives of American Art
  Includes all of the Archives of American Art records. Provides access to primary sources that document American visual arts. Sources from the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
• The Frick Collection
  New York, New York.
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
  The Smithsonian's museum of international modern and contemporary art.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Met (New York, NY)
  
  • Extensive, contextual timeline of Art History.
  • Met Collects: A series of video interviews in which curators and restorers describe exhibitions and restoration projects at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  New features are added each month; 2014 and 2015 (to date) are included.
• MoMA, Museum of Modern Art
  New York, NY.
• The Morgan Library & Museum
  To find Literary & Historical Manuscripts, select the drop down menu from the top right corner. Click Collection, and then Collection Highlights. New York, New York
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
  Browse the Museum's holdings online through a fully searchable database.
  • The MFAH also holds a prominent collection of Documents of 20th Century Latin American and Latino Art
• National Gallery of Art
  
  • National Gallery Catalog online: Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century
  Washington, D.C.
• National Museum of African Art
  "The Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art fosters the discovery and appreciation of the visual arts of Africa, the cradle of humanity." Smithsonian Institution.
• Smithsonian American Art Museum
  First collection of American art in the United States with works by over 7000 artists from colonial times to the present. Explore the Research and Collections tabs in the top menu. Smithsonian Institution.
• The Textile Museum
  The Textile Museum was established in 1925 by George Hewitt Myers in order to "expand public knowledge and appreciation of the artistic merits and cultural importance of the world's textiles." The collection today contains more than 20,000 textiles, and is housed on George Washington University's Foggy Bottom Campus in D.C.

• Basilica of Saint John Lateran
  Take a virtual tour of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, the Catherdral of Rome. Images may take a while to load.
• Getty Publications Virtual Library
  Free online access to more than 250 books on the history of art and photography. Titles can be read online or downloaded in PDF format.
• Google Cultural Institute: Art Project
  "Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces."
• Vatican Museums
  Online tours of Sistine Chapel, the Raphael rooms, and the Egyptian and Etruscan collections. The images are of uneven quality; have patience as they load. A zoom function allows detailed viewing. (Click on the specific section of the image to be enlarged.) A substantial explanatory text accompanies each image.

• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
  A national institute, the Rijksmuseum offers a representative overview of Dutch art and history from the Middle Ages onwards, and of major aspects of European and Asian art. Also see Rijks Studio.
• Vatican Museums
  Online tours of Sistine Chapel, the Raphael rooms, and the Egyptian and Etruscan collections. The images are of uneven quality; have patience as they load. A zoom function allows detailed viewing. (Click on the specific section of the image to be enlarged.) A substantial explanatory text accompanies each image.
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London
  Based in the United Kingdom, the V&A houses a "permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects that span over 5,000 years."

Online Collections

• Artsy
  Artsy is the largest online collection of contemporary art, featuring 350,000 images of art, architecture, and design by 50,000 artists. Most images are freely downloadable for educational use.
• Art Images for College Teaching
  AICT is a free-use image resource for the educational community, which covers Ancient art through the 20th century and non-Western art. Perform specific searches or browse works by Title or Medium. The Textbook Concordance lists the source texts cited with each illustration. Good resolution, full-frame images and details are downloadable.
• Berenice Abbott’s documentation of 1930s New York for the Federal Art Project (New York Public Library Digital Collections).
  Contains duplicates and variants of more than three-quarters of the 302 images in Abbott’s Changing New York Project.
• Europeana
  Provides access to "millions of items from a range of Europe's leading galleries, libraries, archives and museums."
• Rijks Studio
  Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has launched the Rijks Studio, a new online presentation of 125,000 works in its collection. “Rijks Studio invites members of the public to create their own masterpieces by downloading images of artworks or details of artworks in the collection and using them in a creative way. The ultra high-resolution images of works, both famous and less well-known, can be freely downloaded, zoomed in on, shared, added to personal ‘studios’, or manipulated copyright-free."
• SIRIS Smithsonian Institution Research Information System
  Searchable gateway of the Smithsonian research collections of libraries, archives, photographs, 600,000 records comprising the National Inventory of American Painting and Sculpture databases, and specialized research bibliographies.
• Web Gallery of Art
  The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture of the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods (1150-1800), currently containing over 33,300 reproductions. Commentaries on pictures, biographies of artists are available.

Collections in the Public Domain

• Digital Public Library of America
  The Digital Public Library of America is a large cultural heritage site that provides books, images, historic records, and audiovisual materials for public use.
• Flickr Commons
  Flickr Commons was launched in January of 2008, as a pilot project with the Library of Congress. You can find publicly-held photographic collections via the Commons, and even help to catalog images.
• New York Public Library Digital Collections
  180,000 digitized photos, postcards, maps, and other images freely available online and in the public domain.   The NYPL has made the decision to treat these public-domain images as public intellectual property that can be reused by members of the public in any way they want.  (For the New York Public Library’s Press Release on promoting transformative use of their materials, click here.) 
• Wikimedia Commons
  A database of over 31 million freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute.  

• Center for Creative Photography
  Browse online collections of fine arts photographs as well as archival documents from The Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.
• Helios: Photography Online
  Sponsored by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Helios is a digital collection of photographs in the areas of daguerrotypes, early American photography, and contemporary American lanscape photography.
• LensCulture
  An excellent resource for trends in global contemporary photography, LensCulture was founded in 2004 by Jim Casper. The site covers global photography across many differing points of view, including photojournalism, street photography, and documentary photography.
• Library of Congress: Prints and Photographs
  Browse the large collection of prints and photographs available through the Library of Congress by searching their online catalog, or selecting collection topics on the home page.
• Photogrammar
  170,000 iconic pictures of America in the era of the Great Depression and WWII (1935-1945) housed in the Library of Congress, released by Yale and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Searchable by County map.