Research Guides: AAAS/FA-74B Introduction to African Art: Online image resources

Free online image resources for African art

Ross Archive of African Images
Yale University archive of about five thousand images assembled by James J. Ross and Susan Vogel that seeks to present every image of African figurative art published before 1920 in books, periodicals, catalogues, newspapers, and other publications. Includes the text that accompanied the illustrations and current information by scholars. (Annotation from "Art, Art History, and the Study of Africa," Oxford Bibliographies Online)
Art and Life in Africa
Freely accessible educational resource hosted by the University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA); a collaborative effort by more than fifty scholars, technicians, collectors and institutions around the world.
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution
Major archive of visual materials supporting the study of African art; includes over 180,000 slides and color transparencies and 80,000 black-and-white photographs. (Annotation from "Arts of Western Africa," Oxford Bibliographies Online)
G. I. Jones Photographic Archive of Southeastern Nigerian Art and Culture
Rich visual resource for the arts of southeastern Nigeria, from Southern Illinois University, (Annotation from "Arts of Western Africa," Oxford Bibliographies Online)

Other art reproductions

Grove Art Online
Provides the most organized and direct path to a huge number of image links. Here's how to navigate to the image links cited in Grove Art:

Open an article on your topic (for example, Africa)
Click where it reads "External resources," under "Article contents," in the upper left.

Note: when clicked, the links connect directly with the museum or image site, which opens in a new window.

Google Arts and 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."
Google Advanced Image Search
If you want to go fishing on the Web for an image rather than using the Web sites noted above, this is about the best way to do it.
Art Resource
Commercial site, but database is freely available for searching
Artcyclopedia: The Fine Art Search Engine
The mission of this Web site "is to become the definitive and most effective guide to museum-quality fine art on the Internet." And it is an excellent resource! Only provides references to sites on the Web where artists' works can be viewed online.
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Focus is primarily on painting and sculpture, but the Web site also includes other artistic media where possible, including photography, decorative arts, installation art, video, digital and web-based art, naïve art/folk art/outsider art, and architecture. The site is primarily oriented toward searching by artist name.