Research guides: Image Collections for Sciences and Social Sciences: Asian Image Collections

Asian Collections - All Regions

Asian Art Museum
The Asian Art Museum is home to one of the most comprehensive collections of Asian art in the world. Spanning 6,000 years and including more than 17,000 objects, the collection provides an introduction to the major traditions of Asian art and culture.
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Terms of Use:

Copyright

The Asian Art Museum is the copyright holder for all photographic transparencies and digital files of works of art in the AAM photo library. Reproduction of an AAM image without a licensing agreement will constitute an infringement of copyright.

Please note that copyright for some works of art in the museum’s collection may be owned by a third party. Requestors will be notified if additional copyright clearance will be required prior to proceeding with their request. It is the responsibility of the requestor to contact the third party for permission to reproduce the work of art where copyright is owned by a third party. The Asian Art Museum will provide whatever information it has available to assist with this process. AAM assumes no responsibility for any royalties or fees claimed by an artist or a third party.

The Asian Art Museum requires that proof of copyright clearance or proof of attempt at rights clearance be provided prior to the release of images and completion of licensing agreement. The unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or alteration of images may result in a violation of copyright laws.
Chinese in America 1850-1925
Bancroft Library, Berkeley University. "Selections range in format, with books, pamphlets, prints, photographs, manuscripts, sheet music, etc. illustrating aspects of the story."
East Asian Image Collection - Historical Postcards
Lin Chia-Feng Family Postcard Collection; Imperial Postcard Collection; Pacific War Postcard Collection; Michael Lewis Taiwan Postcard Collection; Gerald & Rella Warner Taiwan Postcard Collection; Gerald & Rella Warner Dutch East Indies Negative Collection; Gerald & Rella Warner Manchuria Negative Collection; and more Asian Collections from LaFayette College Libraries.
Huntington Archives - Art & Architecture in Asia
Contains nearly 300,000 original color slides and black and white and color photographs of art and architecture throughout Asia. Countries covered in the collection include India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar (Burma), China, and Japan.
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Terms of Use: "Unless otherwise noted, all images in The Huntington Archive Digital Database Collection are copyright protected to a specific copyright holder, who is noted in the database"
Images of East Asia at Harvard and Beyond
Numerous collections listed: Hedda Morrison Photographs of China 1933-1946; The Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr. Collection on Muslims in China, and more.
Korean Collection
University of Washington, D.C.
VADS - Visual Arts for Teaching

East Asia - Japan, China

China 1917-1932, Duke University Digital Collections
Primarily images from China but some also from Japan, Russian, Korea.
Images of East Asia at Harvard and Beyond
Numerous collections listed: Hedda Morrison Photographs of China 1933-1946; The Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr. Collection on Muslims in China, and more.
Magic Lantern Slides Collection
here are about 1,500 magic lantern slides in the UHM Japan Collection, and these were the gifts of two donors: the Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai 国際文化振興会 (KBS), a predecessor of the present Japan Foundation 国際交流基金, and the family of the Reverend Takie Okumura 奥村多喜衛(1865-1951).
Photographs of China in 1930s - Shackford Collection
University of Manoa, Hawaii. These photographs were taken during the late 1920s and early 1930s by John B. Shackford during his travels and tenure as an English teacher in southern China.
Virtual Museum of Japanese Art
Virtual introduction to a number of different Japanese arts: fine arts, crafts, performing arts, pastime arts, material arts and others, with explanations and numerous photographs.

South Asian Collections

AGSL Digital Photo Collection.
Presents over 4,000 images from the holdings of the American Geographical Society (AGS) Library. The selection focuses on the countries of Asia and the Middle East. The images come from the collections acquired over many decades by the AGS Library including an extensive photographic print collection.
Digital South Asia Library. American Institute of Indian Studies
Sri Lanka: Digital Library for International Research
The Furniture and Decorative Arts of Sri Lanka (FDASL) is a documentary project that produced an inventory of furniture and other decorative arts that were created in Sri Lanka and are currently owned by Sri Lanka's cultural institutions and private collections.

The inventory is presented in an image database of approximately 1,000 images of 400 unique items that were photographed by the project's principal researcher, Ayesha Abdur-Rahman, from 2006 to 2009.