LibGuides: AHIS 3959: Art History Senior Research Seminar: Primary Sources

Tips and Tools for Finding Archives

Locally (Barnard Archives and Special Collections):

The Barnard Archives and Special Collections has materials related to the history of Barnard College and materials that focus on Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, and Dance. You can see a full list of all of collections held at the Barnard Archives and Special Collections’ on our finding aids website.
Within CLIO, you can construct a search for a term and “barnard archives” to find relevant collections. For example: feminism “barnard archives”

Locally (Columbia University Archives and Special Collections):

In order to find archival collections on Columbia’s campus, within CLIO, you can click on the Archives facet on the side navigation. Search here using keyword to find archival materials related to your research.
CLIO searches seven repositories within the Columbia Libraries: Avery Library, Department of Drawings and Archives; Barnard Archives; Burke Library Archives; Columbia University Archives; Health Sciences Archives & Special Collections; Rare Book & Manuscript Library; Starr East Asian Library Rare Books and Special Collections.

Finding Other Archives' Collections:

There are a few decent databases to help you find other archival repositories and collections that might match your research question. To start, try ArchiveGrid, but you can also try WorldCat and Google.
Trace back from secondary sources: what sources are other scholars using to analyze and provide evidence for their arguments? Are these the types of materials that you are interested in utilizing?
Talk with an archivist! Archivists have knowledge about the landscape of institutional collecting and can point you in a good direction.

Art Museum Collection Databases

Brooklyn Museum of Art
This database offers tombstone information about each of the objects in the Brooklyn Museum's collection, as well as exhibition history, contextual narrative and in some cases video and audio clips. High quality images are available for download for public domain works.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
This catalog of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection offers detailed information on each object, high quality reproductions of public domain works, reference lists, and links to related full text resources published by the Met. It also connects to the Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of the History of Art, which offers contextual essays on individual works, creators, locations, and periods.
Museum of Modern Art
The catalog contains over 76,000 works of modern and contemporary art from the MoMA's collection of nearly 200,000 works. This database includes exhibition history, links to the Getty ULAN, and details on individual works of art.
National Gallery of Art
This database offers basic information about pieces in the NGA's collections, and also provenance, exhibition history, related information and bibliography.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
This site is a living database of the New York Public Library's digital collections with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more. It includes the digital collections for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. You can search public domain works by clicking on public domain below the search box.
Smithsonian Collections Search Center
The Smithsonian Collections Search Center is an online catalog containing most of Smithsonian major collections from their museums, archives, libraries, and research units. Collections include the Anacostia Community Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Museum of African Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum among many others.
The Studio Museum in Harlem
This collection database allows you to browse the Studio Museum's permanent collection. Click on the image to get further information about each work.
Whitney Museum
Explore the Whitney's collection of over 23,000 works, created by more than 3,000 American artists during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. See work on view in our galleries below, or browse the full collection.