Art & Design: Web Resources

Discover the story of art and global culture through The Met collection. Read essays, explore chronologies, or just view art by time period, geography or theme.

Smarthistory’s free, award-winning digital content unlocks the expertise of hundreds of leading scholars, making the history of art accessible and engaging to more people, in more places, than any other publisher.

The Art Genome Project is the classification system and technological framework that powers Artsy. It maps the characteristics (we call them “genes”) that connect artists, artworks, architecture, and design objects across history. There are currently over 1,000 characteristics in The Art Genome Project, including art historical movements, subject matter, and formal qualities.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation’s first collection of American art, is an unparalleled record of the American experience. The collection captures the aspirations, character, and imagination of the American people throughout three centuries. The museum is the home to one of the largest and most inclusive collections of American art in the world. Its artworks reveal key aspects of America’s rich artistic and cultural history from the colonial period to today.

Indexes online museums and image archives. Can be searched by art work, artist, museum or browsed by topic.

Tate's online glossary is designed to explain and illuminate some of the art terminology you will find on our website. It contains definitions, most with illustrations, of over 400 terms including artist groups and art movements, techniques, media and other art jargon.

Artsy features the world’s leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions, all in one place. Our growing database of 1,000,000 works of art, architecture, and design by 100,000 artists spans historical, modern, and contemporary works, and includes the largest online database of contemporary art. Artsy is used by art lovers, museum-goers, patrons, collectors, students, and educators to discover, learn about, and collect art.

Google Arts & Culture is a non-profit initiative. We work with cultural institutions and artists around the world. Together, our mission is to preserve and bring the world’s art and culture online so it’s accessible to anyone, anywhere.

Explore the Whitney's collection of over 25,000 works, created by more than 3,600 American artists during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Art UK features over 250,000 artworks. You can search for artworks or artists, or explore art by theme through topics. Our stories highlight artists, movements, collections, exhibitions and themes.

Our evolving collection contains almost 200,000 works of modern and contemporary art. More than 89,000 works are currently available online.

Hundreds of thousands of open access images, including excellent metadata from collections around the world.