Architonic A commercial site, the link to retailers of contemporary editions of classic design, but you can search for design objects (mostly furniture) by designer, materials, etc.
Art Images for CollegeTeaching The AICT website’s emphasis is on ancient, medieval, and renaissance European art and architecture. Images are separated into the categories of ancient, medieval era, renaissance and baroque, 18th and 19th century, and non-western.
The Bowes Museum advanced searching options for an extensive collection of decorative arts.
Calisphere is the University of California’s free public gateway to a world of primary sources. More than 150,000 digitized items, including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts.
Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum Provides access to digital images of many objects in the museum’s collection including product design, decorative arts, drawing, prints, graphic design, textiles and wall coverings.
Creative Commons This website provides links to search engines that can be used to find images that are not protected by copyright.
Decorative Arts and Material Culture, University of Wisconsin Over 100 works of Early American furniture, more than 270 ceramic objects and 135 prints dating from the 17th to the early 19th century, belonging to the Chipstone Foundation, are now represented in a searchable database produced at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, General Library System, with Chipstone support. More than 1,250 images.
Gallica the digital collections of the Bibliothéque National de France (in French).
Harvard University Art Museum’s Collections Online Collections Online provides access to basic information about every object on exhibition in our galleries, and about 81,000 works of art, more than half of the permanent holdings of the Harvard University Art Museums.
The Huntington Library Art Collections Offers digital images from their art collections including, American paintings, American sculpture, British drawings, British paintings, British sculpture and William Morris Collection.
The Ide Virtual Design Museum This online museum offers images by designer and company as well as 3D object movies and brochures.
The Library of Congress Online Prints and Photographs Catalogue offers digital images of much of the Prints and Photographs Division’s holdings including architecture, design and engineering, among other categories.
Metropolitan Museum of Art The museum contains more than two million works of art from all points of the compass, ancient through modern times. Includes the American Decorative Arts Collection.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Currently provides 330,320 digital images of objects from their collection including textile and fashion arts.
Museum of Modern Art Online collection offers digital images of over seven thousand objects in the Museum’s collection including architecture and design drawings, painting, sculpture, photography, prints and illustrated books, film and media.
Museums of the Online Archive of California (MOAC) The MOAC collection contains nearly 38,000 images from 7 California museums and libraries, Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive, Japanese American National Museum, Oakland Museum of California, Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, UC Berkeley Bancroft Library, UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts.
New York Public Library Digital Gallery Offers 550,000 digital images under the categories of illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, etc.
Smithsonian Institution Online Resources in Art and Design offers a collection of digital images including architecture and gardens, crafts, folk and decorative arts, film, theatre and TV, graphic art, industrial design, music, painting, photography, sculpture, stamps, letters and coins, writing and literature. Note: Go into the “Research” tab for extensive listings.
Stanford University Online Collection This digital collection includes digital audio and video from the R. Buckminster Fuller collection and links to other important collections.
Victoria & Albert Museum Online collection offers 43,000 images from the V&A collection including ceramics, fashion, furniture, glass, metalwork, paintings, photography, prints, sculpture, and textiles.
Visual Arts Data Service Provides access to the digital archives of many organizations including the African and Asian Visual Arts Archive, The Imperial War Museum’s poster archive and the design archives of a number of Universities.
Visual Collections contains dozens of digital image collections from Museums, Universities and private collections throughout the world. View maps, fine artwork, photographs, architecture and other items from over thirty renowned collections.
The Wolfsonian Florida International University Modern Dutch Collection This searchable database currently consists of roughly 900 records and images from the Wolfsonian’s collection of Dutch artifacts, including rare book covers, calendars, proofs, advertisements, and original sketches dating from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century.
AIGA Design Archives Provides access to a collection of digital images of contemporary design with an emphasis on American design in the categories of book design, brand and identity design, corporate communications design, editorial design, environmental graphic design, experience design, illustration, information design, motion design, package design, promotional and advertising design, and typographic design.
The Chicago Design Archive offers a selection of digital images of three graphic design exhibitions from the Society of Typographic Arts in 2002. “Fifty Years of Graphic Design in Chicago 1927-1977,” “Fifty Years of Chicago Graphic Design 1941-1991,” and “Seventy-five Years of Graphic Design in Chicago.” Search for images by designer, firm, client and date.
Phillip Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, 4th Edition Instructor Companion Site This website by Wiley Higher Education offers images available for individual download from Megg’s History of Graphic Design, 4th Edition.
The Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) The society of Typographic Aficionados offers resources in typography and graphic design.
The Golden Age of Illustration: Artists and their Works provides access to digital images of illustrators work from “the Golden Age of Illustration” between the 1880s and 1920s.
The Grolier Club Library offers resources in book arts with an extensive collection of books and manuscripts on printing and related book arts.
NMAI: Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth digital images of the work of many great illustrators from “the Golden Age of Illustration,” including Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, Howard Pyle, H.C. Christy, J.C. Leyendecker, J.M. Flagg, Charles D. Gibson, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Harrison Fisher, Dean Cornwall, John Falter, Elizabeth S. Green, Meade Schaeffer, and Frank E. Schoonover.
Ad*Access A Duke University image database of over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Covering five categories – Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II.
ArchNet Provides an extensive, high-quality, globally accessible, intellectual resource focused on architecture and planning issues and includes restoration, conservation, housing, landscape, and related concerns. Offering a searchable text library, bibliographical reference databases, online lectures, curricular materials, papers, essays, and reviews, discussion forums and statistical information.
Art and Architecture more than 40,000 images here, and a network of over half a million links.
The Australian National University, ArtServe Art and architecture mainly from the Mediterranean Basin, Japan, India & Cambodia.
bauhaus-archiv museum for design – bauhaus-archive offers archives on the history of the Bauhaus, its people, workshops and production.
Catena Sponsored by the Bard Graduate Center through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Catena, the Digital Archive of Historic Gardens and Landscapes and its companion website, is envisioned as part of a larger, typologically organized archive of digital images with accompanying educational materials.
Cities/Buildings Database Contains over 5000 images ranging from New York to Central Asia, African villages to the Parc de la Villette.
Cover Art: The Time Collection at the National Portrait Gallery offers access to the large collection of digital images of original artwork that has been on the cover of Time Magazine. This artwork was given to the National Portrait Gallery by Time Magazine.
Digital South Asia Library [American Institute of Indian Studies] The database provides, images, maps, statistics, reference sources, bibliographies, indexes, etc. The original AIIS collection is organized into four separate collections, architecture, sculpture, paintings and numismatics. The web version of the AIIS photograph archive has combined these four collections into one for ease of searching and display.
Eames Office offers a large digital archive of Eames design and blueprints including furniture, toys, accessories, etc.
Grapus Poster Archive offers digital images of the posters and graphic work of Grapus between 1970 and 1990. (French language only)
Great Buildings Collection This gateway to architecture around the world and across history documents a thousand buildings and hundreds of leading architects, with 3D models, photographic images and architectural drawings, commentaries, bibliographies, web links, and more, for famous designers and structures of all kinds.
Good Design Award Archives images and designer/manufacturer information for Japanese products and other designs (including recent architecture, sign systems, etc.) that have been awarded G Mark status since the 1950s.
The Gutenberg Bible at the Ransom Center The Ransom Center at the University of Texas offers a complete digital archive of over 1300 images of the pages of the Gutenberg Bible including detailed images of illuminated letters.
ImageBase [Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco] The ImageBase is a searchable image and text database of objects from the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
The Internet Archive provides access to digital records of moving images, live music, audio recordings, and text.
The Society of Architectural Historians provides a world survey set of digital images of architecture and built environment in two parts. Part I: Ancient through Mid-evil plus early non-Europe and Part II: Renaissance through Modern.
The Design Studies Forum is currently gathering content to better meet the needs of our growing field. For further information or suggestions, please contact us.