Art History

The Art Story Foundation’s vision is a world where the ideas behind wondrous works of art are accessible to anyone who wants to explore them, rather than just art professionals and academics. We streamline and organize information about artists, movements, and ideas, and present it using sophisticated, user friendly graphical tools. The resources of The Art Story Foundation are available on every computer and mobile device to anyone, completely free of charge.

A resource for art collecting and education, Artsy features the world’s leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions, all in one place. Our growing database of 350,000 images of art, architecture, and design by 50,000 artists spans historical, modern, and contemporary works, and includes the largest online database of contemporary art. Artsy is used by art lovers, museum-goers, patrons, collectors, students, and educators to discover, learn about, and collect art.

Gallica, from the Bibliothèque nationale de Franc is one of the major digital libraries available for free via the Internet. It provides access to any type of document: printed documents (books, press and magazines) in image and text mode, manuscripts, sound and iconographic documents, maps and plans.

A digital platform for European heritage that brings together digitized collections materials from over 3000 archives, libraries and museums throughout Europe.

Google Arts & Culture features content from over 1000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online.

The Timeline presents a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of global art history through The Met collection. It is a reference, research, and teaching tool conceived for students and scholars of art history. It is authored by The Met’s experts, and comprises 300 chronologies and close to 1,000 essays and more than 7,000 works of art. It is regularly updated and enriched to provide new scholarship and insights on the collection.The Timeline presents a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of global art history through The Met collection. It is a reference, research, and teaching tool conceived for students and scholars of art history. It is authored by The Met’s experts, and comprises 300 chronologies and close to 1,000 essays and more than 7,000 works of art. It is regularly updated and enriched to provide new scholarship and insights on the collection.

From the STAMPS school of Art & Design, University of Michigan. Includes Art History Departments, Research Resources, Image Collections, Art Museums etc.

From the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Here, in their own words, many of these artists share their creative process and their stories.

Smarthistory is a leading resource for the study of art and cultural heritage. Our growing collection of videos and essays are designed to be engaging and conversational and cover art that ranges from the paleolithic to the present. Everything on Smarthistory is completely free and our content is offered with no advertising. We are a tiny non-profit organization based in New York, but we reach millions of learners around the world. Smarthistory is a collaboration of more than 200 art historians, archaeologists, curators and other specialists who want to make the highest-quality art history learning content freely available to a global audience. Contributing editors oversee specific content areas.