Image and Resource Collection

A guide to Image Resources created by Dr. Harriet Sonne de Torrens, University of Toronto Mississauga

• ADA (Archive of Digital Art) - (formerly Database of Virtual Art)
• ArtNet
• Art Resource
• Digital Public Library of America
• Europeana
• Flickr 
• Getty Open Content Program
• Google Arts and Culture
• Google Lens 
• Internet Archives
• TinEYE
• VADS: Visual Arts Data Service
• WikiMedia Commons
• WikiArt

All museums and galleries have some images of their artworks online. Many go further with databases containing high-quality images and excellent descriptions. Here are just a few particularly good examples.

• AGO - Art Gallery of Ontario
• The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery
• The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) 
• Toronto Biennial of Art
• Textile Museum of Canada
• The Bentway
• Toronto Canada Council for the Arts
• Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des artistes canadiens (CARFAC)
• MOMA - Museum of Modern Art
• Tate Gallery
• Whitney Museum of American Art 
• National Gallery of Art

A growing number of social media image databases allow users to upload, tag, and search images. They can be helpful in locating images of ambiguous material. The visual quality is variable. 

On photo-sharing websites, there are numerous accounts for artists, museums, galleries, and other people and organizations in the art world. For instance, you can visit the Art Gallery of Ontario’s page on Instagram or Pinterest

Sources for images must be cited even if they have been retrieved from a free or public domain.

The basic information you will need:

• Name of the artist(s)
• Title of the work
• Date it was created
• Repository, museum, gallery or owner
• Country of origin
• Dimensions of the work
• Material or medium of the original work (not the image) (i.e. oil on canvas, photograph, limestone, film, etc.)

For more information, go to our Writing and Citation page.