Museums with Digital Collections
The museums listed have made high-quality images of their collections available online--but this list is not exhaustive! Many of these museums offer download options for personal and academic use. For collection images that cannot be downloaded, use the screenshot method to capture the image you need for academic purposes.
= Denotes the availability of high resolution downloads
Featured Museum Collection
MetCollects is an online project highlighting recent acquisitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Featured artworks include high quality images, commentary by curators and conservators, artist interviews, and other related media.
Provenance Research
- Smithsonian Art Inventories CatalogThe SIRIS system searches two Smithsonian databases: the Inventory of American Paintings and the Inventory of American Sculpture. These inventories provide information on over 400,000 artworks in public and private collections worldwide.
- Getty Provenance Index® DatabasesThe Getty Provenance Index is a collection of databases containing extensive records including archival inventories of private collections, sales catalogs, dealer stock books, payment records, and public collections provenance information. The databases focus on American, British, and German art markets.
- IFAR's Index of Catalogues RaisonnésInternational Foundation for Art Research's database containing records for catalogues raisonnés—scholarly compilations of an artist's body of work.
- Smithsonian's Archives of American ArtThe Archives of American Art contain a diverse collection of records including gallery records, museum exhibitions, and personal material from individual artists. Check out their digitized collections and their guide to World War II era provenance research.
