
Located in the Visual Arts Library at 380 Second Avenue on the 2nd floor, SVA's VRC is the central resource for images and imaging technologies used by instructors and students at SVA for teaching and studying purposes. Below you will find more information about our services as well as helpful links on how and where to access a broad range of online digital image collections of artworks for educational purposes and/or personal enjoyment.
Also, don't forget to check out the VRC's Blog, In the Loupe, for image-related news, info, user tips, tutorials and updates of new additions to SVA's growing digital collection.
Hours
The VRC is staffed Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm. If you are a faculty member and currently teaching a course, you may gain access to the VRC at any time the library is open (check the library page for a list of operating hours).
Collection
The collection includes over 70,000 local digital records through our in-house image database, SVA Image Library (MDID). There are also approximately 130,000 35mm slides and access to online databases of images, such as ARTstor.
Services
VRC staff offers a variety of services to the SVA community, including maintenance of our online collection of images as well as training and technical support for SVA Image Library (MDID) and ARTstor. We provide information on scanning and storing images in addition to assistance in converting lectures based on converting analog to digital images.
One-on-one instruction for the use of our image databases is available by Tessa Morefield (tmorefield@sva.edu, 212-592-2666) or Lorraine Gerety (lgerety@sva.edu, 212-592-2667). We also offer faculty a quiet space (equipped with workstations for Internet access and WiFi, an Epson GT 20000 scanner and a photocopier) for preparing lectures, meeting with students and/or conducting research.
If you are having trouble accessing slideshows and images in the SVA Image Library (MDID) due to Flash Player issues, please refer to the below information to enable the Flash Player plugin on your browser.
First and foremost, we highly recommend that you try logging into the SVA Image Library (MDID) using the Mozilla Firefox browser*, as for some reason it seems to be supporting these issues the best, followed by Chrome (avoid using Safari if possible). In either case, once you enter your SVA credentials to login, you will most likely see the below message that Adobe Flash Player is out of date. While it might be helpful to try and download a later version of Flash, you can ignore this prompt and select the option "Click here to continue anyway."
Then, follow the steps in the below helpful links to manage your Flash Player plugin:
If your first attempt does not work, try another browser, as it might work better on the particular computer you are using. If none of these work, please contact us directly in the VRC.
We apologize for these issues and we are currently in the process of upgrading MDID, which will be launching soon. Thank you for your patience!
*MAC USERS: If the Firefox application is not located on the dock of your Mac, simply click on your Finder app and go into Applications. Scroll down and you will be able to see if you have Firefox downloaded. If so, double click to open, and you can even drag the app to your dock for easy access in the future. PC USERS: If you do not have the app installed on your desktop, go into your programs to see is you have it. If you do not see the app in either case, click here to download the browser, which is free and easy to install.
Below are a few research guides on Copyright Basics:
The following are some great Use Assessment Tools pertaining to copyright, fair use guidelines and best practices:
Click here to visit Colgate University's helpful examples of how to create correct image citations in papers and presentations, using MLA, Chicago and APA writing styles. Another great option is the Research Guide for Citing Images provided by UC Libraries.
Art Images for College Teaching (AICT) – Art Images for College Teaching is a non-profit project of its author, art historian and visual resources curator, Allan T. Kohl.
Smithsonian – link to multiple image databases
Wellesley wiki – covers free and fair use web sites
Wikimedia Commons – a database of 23,201,975 freely usable media files
WorldImages database – provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project. It contains approximately 100,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam – letters to and from Vincent Van Gogh
Historic Cities – maps, literature, documents, books, and other materials relating to the past, present and future of historic cities
DigitalNZ – an initiative led by the National Library of New Zealand, with more than 160 partners and over 28 million digital items to discover, such as aerial photos, posters and memorabilia, newspaper clippings, artworks and publications.
The Clara database – offers information on 18,000 women visual artists of all time periods and nationalities, drawn from the materials in the National Museum of Women Artists’ extensive Archives
Victoria and Albert Museum collections
Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource – from Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery
MCAD Library – image collection project called, "Art of the Poster: 1880-1918"
accessCeramics – contemporary ceramics image resource
AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) Design Archives
State Hermitage Museum’s Digital Collection (English language link)
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna
Louvre Collection Databases (English language link)
Museo Nacional del Prado (English language link)
Scholars resource – provides works of art for teaching, including image collections from Saskia Ltd., Davis Art Images, Hartill Art Associates, Archivision, the Bridgeman Art Library, and more
Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archive – an extensive image library featuring over 40,000 high-resolution images from over 500 museums and many other collections
New York Public Library Digital Gallery – provides free and open access to hundreds of thousands of digital images from the NYPL’s collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, rare prints, photographs and more
Uffizi Gallery, Florence (English language link)
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
The Web Gallery of Art – a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture from 11th to mid-19th centuries
Index of Christian Art – a subscription database, through Princeton University, of one of the largest and most important photographic and bibliographic archives of medieval art, worldwide
Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum – research resource on Greek vases in museum collections, worldwide, with approx. 250 digitized museum catalogues
Collections of Japanese Art Online and in Print – maintained Rosina Buckland (IFA Alumnus)
Bridgeman Images – excellent source of fine art and historical images from over 8,000 collections with more than 29,000 artists
Classical Art Research Centre and the Beazley Archive – provides bibliographic references and allows for iconographic searching on Classical vases. Based on J.D. Beazley’s Attic black-figure vase-painters and Attic red-figure vase painters
VADS – a variety of online image collections at various UK institutions from (mostly) non-traditional fields of art history
Art Resource – photo archive of more than 1,000,000 fine art images of works from prehistoric times to the present, and over 3,000,000 transparencies and black and white photographs of painting, sculpture, architecture and the minor arts (also serves as the official rights and permissions representative for many institutions in the United States and abroad)
The Courtauld Institute of Art – more than 40,000 images and a network of over half a million links
Chartres: Cathedral of Notre Dame – created by the University of Pittsburgh, this website provides access to a comprehensive collection of images and detailed descriptions of Chartres Cathedral
Local Artists – the Irving Sandler Artists File is “not only the largest but also the earliest established artist registry in the world,” representing mostly young, contemporary artists working in North America.
New York Public Library Picture Collection (approx. 38,000 images)
Art History Resources – a comprehensive site with links to art images from prehistoric times through the 20th Century
Art Source – is a selective site with links to many online art and art history resources
National Library of the Netherlands: Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
Boston Printmakers Association
British Library's Online Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts - a searchable database of some of the western illuminated manuscripts in the British Library
Smithsonian Institution Cross Collection Search Tool
Metropolitan Museum of Art Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History - The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History pairs essays and works of art with chronologies, telling the story of art and global culture through the Museum’s collection.
Victorian Resources Online - annotated list of scholarly websites
Jisc Digital Media - Museums, galleries and collections from jisc digital media (joint information systems committee)
Europeana Collections - portal with links to over 52,308,086 images, text, video and sounds from European museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections.
ArchitectureWeek - collection of photos, architectural plans, 3D models and maps
Museum of Modern Art New York - museum’s online collection of over 65,000 works. Multimedia section includes audio, video and interactive exhibitions
The National Gallery (London) - entire collection available to search, also of interest is the Research section for access to other online collections
The National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.) - collection, audio and video podcasts are also available
TATE - online collection which includes illustrated information for the majority of works from Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. You can also access nearly 2,500 artworks by Joseph Mallord William Turner from other collections. Together with Tate's own holdings, these form the most comprehensive online catalogue of Turner's work.
Artnet - aimed at art buyers and sellers, the site lets you browse the works of thousands of contemporary artists and galleries from around the world
askART - resource for art pricing, offering international art auction records, artist biographies, artist signatures and more.
American Folk Art Museum (New York) - over 8,000 works of art from the U.S. and abroad, spanning traditional American folk art made at the turn of the eighteenth century to twenty-first century works by self-taught artists and art brut creators.
The Asia Society Museum Collection (New York)
Brooklyn Museum's Online Collection
Chelsea Gallery Map - listing of art galleries in NYC's Chelsea neighborhood
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Guggenheim Collection Online – searchable database of selected artworks from the Museum’s permanent collection, containing more than 1,450 artworks by over 470 artists
International Center of Photography – collection of over 58,000 digital records spanning the history of photography as a medium, from daguerreotypes to gelatin silver and digital chromogenic prints, with a special emphasis on American and European documentary photography from about 1930 through the 1960s
Morgan Library and Museum – holdings including Egyptian art, Renaissance paintings, Chinese porcelains, illuminated, literary and historical manuscripts, as well as early printed books, old master drawings and prints
National Academy Museum – one of the largest public American art collections in the country containing over 7,000 works from the 19th century to the present
Whitney Museum of American Art – containing over 21,000 works, reflecting the wide range of mediums and movements in the Whitney’s collection