Research Guides: Find Art & Design Images: Image Databases

Art & Design Digital Image Databases

Use digital image collections available through VCU Libraries to find high-resolution images
for educational (teaching, study, and research) purposes.

JSTOR: Image Search
Database featuring a range of images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences, from libraries, museums, and archives worldwide. Includes ARTSTOR's collections of images for education and research.
Aluka
An international initiative to build an online library of full-text scholarly resources from and about Africa, Aluka includes archival documents, books, ecological data, periodicals, reports, maps, and oral histories.
Anatomy.TV
Interactive 3D models of human anatomy, including images of all bodily systems. Users may manipulate the images and view accompanying text, animations, dynamic MRI, and movie clips, as well as take interactive quizzes.
AP Images
Millions of historical and contemporary news photographs with thousands more added daily. Includes a collection of graphics containing logos, maps, and timelines, as well as audio clips and news stories.
Birds of the World
Comprehensive reference covering the life histories of North American breeding birds. Includes images and videos of plumage, behaviors, habitat, nest, and eggs. Contains songs and calls.
Bloomsbury Design Library
Cross-searchable access to a broad and expanding range of encyclopedias, reference works, e-books, images, and more covering the global history, theory, and practice of crafts and design.
Bloomsbury Fashion Central
Contains Berg Fashion Library, which provides cross-searchable access to interdisciplinary text and image content on world dress and fashion. Includes e-books, reference works, images, and more.
Index of Medieval Art
With works ranging from apostolic times to the 16th century, the Index of Medieval Art documents art found in a broadly-defined medieval context. This expansive archive contains images and full-text records.
Material Connexion
Extensive, comprehensive collection of innovative materials and processes, organized into polymers, cement-based materials, glass, metals, ceramics, natural materials, and carbon-based materials. Resource for designers of all disciplines.
Oxford Art Online
Integrated searchable access to Grove Art Online, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, and more.
(Limited to 3 simultaneous users)
Vogue Archive
Image-rich primary source for the study of fashion, gender and modern social history. It presents a portrait of its era through photographs, articles, and advertisements. Contains every page of Vogue Magazine from 1892 to the present.
WGSN (World Global Style Network)
Focusing on the areas and intersections of fashion, style, and commerce, WGSN provides a global view on trends in design. Its archive contains millions of images from the runways, the street, retail outlets, and design sketches.

VCU Libraries Digital Collections
An emerging collection of digitized images, text, video, and audio. Includes Rarely Seen Richmond, a collection of more than 600 postcard images of Richmond, and the Richmond Planning Slide Collection, with over 8,000 photographs of the city.