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Architecture

This is a general research guide for architecture research

Selected Image Databases in Art History

Large image repositories

Select museum collections

Digital museum collections are a great place to find high-quality reproductions of works of art, as well as all the information you need to properly caption your images. Below you will find a selection of New York City museums (and a couple of others too), which have strong digital collections online. 

Image Databases in Architecture

Finding High Quality Images

Reverse Google Image Search

Reverse Google Image Search allows you to search in Google using the image file itself rather than doing a keyword search. This is useful for pinpointing images that are the same or similar to the image your are looking for. Simply go to https://images.google.com/ and drag and drop your image file into the search box.

Artstor

Artstor offers more than one million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences with a suite of tools for doing research. Images in Artstor are high quality images for download, with complete descriptive information related to the image itself, and the object(s) depicted. 

Advanced Search: Allows you to search by architect, image creator, and project, and further limit your search by location, classification (architecture, decorative arts, drawing, etc.), by date, or search within institutional collections like Columbia University Image Bank, or all of Artstor.

 

Results: You can further refine your search results in the result page.

 

Image View: Offers you all the the rights information you need to make a full citation, and also offers other important information you might not find elsewhere. You can also download high resolution images directly from this page.