Research Guides: Free Images: Creative Commons and Public Domain: Museum Collections

Multi-Museum Search Options

Europeana
Digital images of over 10 million objects from collections throughout the European Union, including art works, museum objects and books. These include items originating outside Europe, e.g. East Asian art. Images and descriptions are provided by the home institutions rather than Europeana itself, so quality varies. Descriptions are in the language of the contributing institution, though a translation tool is provided. Confusingly, this is separate from the menu of languages for the site as a whole. Europeana is divided into many collections, including art history.
International Confederation of Architectual Museums

Musems and Galleries

Brooklyn Museum
Multi-discipline collection, western and non-western image resources.
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You may use and share images from our website for noncommercial purposes with attribution to the Brooklyn Museum in accordance with our copyright policy. The Brooklyn Museum charges licensing fees for commercial use of Brooklyn Museum images, which help fund ongoing efforts to care for our collection. For press information and images, please contact press@brooklynmuseum.org.
Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, UK
The online catalog contains almost 145,000 object records and 114,042 images.
Frick Museum: Digital Image Collection
The Frick Digital Image Archive is an online resource that provides public access to the research collections of the library, museum images from the Frick Collection, and historical documents, photographs, and movies from the Frick Family archives. Digital file types include high resolution images, pdf documents, and video.
Online Archive of California
Historical materials from a variety of California institutions, including museums, historical societies, and archives. Over 120,000 images.
The Art Institute of Chicago
Access to over 45,000 works and basic information about works of art from all areas of our encyclopedic collection.
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Image Licensing can provide a print, slide, or low-resolution digital file (JPG) of a work of art from our collection for educational use or for scholarly or personal research, including a thesis, dissertation, or other school-related paper.

Requests must include contact information (name, address, telephone, e-mail), specify the image(s) requested, and indicate whether a black-and-white or color image is preferred.

These materials are for research and educational purposes only and are not intended for use in a publication, broadcast, or any other medium. If you are interested in obtaining a reproduction of a work of art to use in a publication, or other project, please see Publishing, Advertising, and Other Projects.
The British Museum
More than 533,000 objects have images in this 1.8 million item database.
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Terms of use permitted for: 1. Definitions

In these Terms of Use approved purposes:
* Educational;
* Academic;
* Scholarly; or
* Motivated by private interest.
Tokyo National Museum
The Museum was established in 1872. It collects, houses, and displays a comprehensive collection of art works and antiquities from Japan as well as other Asian countries. 500 of the various works of art and decorative art, archaeological relics, and other cultural assets from the Tokyo National Museum collection are also available to view on the internet.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Create a free account. Large images for teaching and study purposes available for downloading, at no charge.
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Terms of use: educational and study purposes.