The Artstor website is scheduled to be retired on August 1, 2024. Artstor's content, key resources and functionality are moving to JSTOR.

The Artstor image database contains more than one million high-quality digital images that can be used free of charge for scientific purposes, through the Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) programme.

On the homepage you can enter a search term in the search field. You also have the option to browse by:

• Geography, e.g. Afghanistan, Algeria, Austria...
• Classification, e.g. painting, performing arts, photography...
• Collection, e.g. Art Institute of Chicago, Asia Art Archive, Condé Nast, Cartoons and fashion photography...

You don't have to take into account capital letters, articles or hyphens.

Via the 'Advanced Search' button underneath the 'Search' field you can combine various search criteria (in any field, Title, Creator, Location, Repository, Subject, Material, Style or Period, Work Type, Culture, Technique, Number, SSID and Repository ID) or select 'geography', 'collection type' or 'classification'.

On the results page you can refine your search or double-click on the thumbnail to get more information. Click on the image itself to see all bibliographic data, for example in 'Repository' the institution/museum where the work is located.

In the results page, you can search further within the results or double-click on the 'thumbnail' to get more data. Click on the image to see all the bibliographic data, including under 'Repository' the institution/museum where the work is located.

Access

Almost 300 collections are publicly accessible via this database. 

Search operators

• * replaces zero, one or several characters, e.g. ren* will retrieve rene, reni, renoir, rendering, renaissance, etc.
• $ can be added to a root word, e.g. $paint will retrieve paint, painting, painted, unpainted, repainted, etc.
• To keep a phrase together, put it between quotation marks ("...")

Export

Select the item of which you want to save the citation, then choose 'Cite this item' and click 'Copy to clipboard' in the next window under the citation style you want to use.

If you're using Zotero, just click the browser plugin button.

Alerts & saving searches

You have to register to be able to download images. 

More information

In the Artstor Support section you can find, amongst other things, a comprehensible list of permitted uses of images and other Artstor content.