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Images and Visual Resource Collections

Online guide to image collections for faculty, researchers and students at the University of Toronto.

Need Help?

Book a research consultation contact Harriet Sonne de Torrens, Liaison Librarian for Art History, Visual Studies and Cinema at UTM. harriet.sonne@utoronto.ca and website https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/dvs/harriet-sonne-de-torrens. and Portal Help: ask us!

Faculty liaison librarians
Starting Points

This research guide directs you to a range of resources at the University of Toronto Library and numerous online resources for specialized subject areas. Consult the tab, Public Domain and Creative Commons for images that do not require copyright permissions to use. For copyright guidance in using images under fair dealing (Canadian legislation) and for other purposes consult: University of Toronto Library Copyright Website.

U of T Institutional Teaching Collection of Images

The U of T Institutional Teaching Collection (ITC) includes a close to 100,000 digital images of art and architecture used for teaching the art history, visual studies, and architecture. The collection is accessible to U of T users via their UTOR ID. The collections previously called FADIS has migrated to the JSTOR platform.  Access: https://www.jstor.org/site/university-of-toronto/SEE also the JSTOR FOR IMAGES research guide. Included in the teaching collections are the following special collections used for teaching:

ARCHITECTURE COLLECTION

Faculty teaching collections about global architectural developments from pre-history to the 21st century.

BLACKWOOD GALLERY COLLECTION

The UTM Blackwood Gallery exhibitions, installations, and owned artworks by the following artists: Pitseolak Ashoona, General Idea, Francis Kagige, David Blackwood, Wolf Arnold, Walter Bachinski, Anne Meredith Barry, Maxwell Bates, Carl Beam, Michael Behnan, Rebecca Belmore, Barbara Fischer, Isaac Bickerstaff, Robert Bordeau, Barker Fairley, and many more.

CASKEY TEACHING AND RESEARCH COLLECTION  Research and teaching resources, 1996 to present, primarily medieval art and architecture of the Mediterranean world.

COLLECTIONS OF J. W. SHAW (U of T Archives, Joseph W. Shaw Fonds) and James Walter Graham (1906–91), authority in Minoan architecture: maps, plans, photographs of excavation and historical sites from the collections. J. W. Graham taught in the Department of Fine Art from 1947 to 1967.

EAST ASIAN LIBRARY COLLECTIONS

This collection consists of photographs and documents about Prussian naval officer Erich Matz in the German colony Qingdao (Tsingtao, China) from 1902-1914; 153 cultural and political photographs from North Korea from 1950s-1980s; photographs and documents from WWI to WWII about the Hollywood filmmaker, Leon Belasco’s travels from Odessa to Russia, China, Japan to Hollywood.

FINE ART PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION (Red Boxes)

Teaching collection of over 10,000 professional photographs for art history from the Classical period to the twentieth century: architecture, sculpture, manuscripts, mosaics, domestic and ecclesiastic sites and many more works.

MALCOVE COLLECTION

617 works representing art history from prehistory to the twentieth century, including Greek, Roman, Byzantine, medieval objects, and Far East: paintings, drawings, furniture, icons, manuscripts, and textiles, as well as works in terracotta, glass, bronze, stone, enamel, ivory, silver and gold. Collected by Dr. Lillian Malcove (1902-1981) available for viewing at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto Art Centre.

NEW FRANCE COLLECTION

The collection consists of over 1,000 prints from the early travel print books produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Prints by John White, Thomas Harriot, Theodor de Bry and Hans Sloan.

PIMS MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION

Manuscript teaching collection of 5,776 images from Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE ART COLLECTION

749 works of art by renowned Canadian artists: Lauren Stewart Harris, Gershon Iskowitz, Alexander Young Jackson, Authur Lismer, and more… Toni Onley, Mendelson Joe, James Wilson Morrice, James Edward Hervey Macdonald, Robert Murray, Kazuo Nakamura, and many more important Canadian artists.

UTM ASIAN SHORT FILM COLLECTION

The UTM contemporary film collection (from Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan) started in the fall of 2019 under the guidance of Prof. Elizabeth Wijaya and Prof. Lai Weijie in the Department of Visual Studies.