Looking for images for the fall semester? The JHU Visual Resources Collection is accessible from the ARTstor Digital Library for all JHU faculty, students, and staff. The ARTstor interface allows for consolidated searching across the JHU Visual Resources Collection of 160,000 digital images and the ARTstor collections of more than 1.9 million images.
While historically focused on the history of art with strengths in ancient art, medieval art, Renaissance art, manuscripts and printed books, 19th and 20th century art, and Contemporary Asian art, the Visual Resources Collection is constantly evolving to support other areas of research throughout the arts and sciences such as the histories of science, technology, and medicine.
And not only is the Visual Resources Collection interdisciplinary, a close look at ARTstor’s collections reveals that there’s a lot more to ARTstor than art! Just for starters, explore the American Museum of Natural History collection, Condé Nast collection (read: 25,000 New Yorker Cartoons and more), the Schlesinger History of Women in America Collection, the Vesalius Anatomical Illustrations collection, and the World War I and II Posters and Postcards collection.
Meanwhile, ARTstor’s Shared Shelf Commons is a free, open-access library of images contributed by institutions all over the globe. Shared Shelf Commons collections are available separately on the open web, but also appear within ARTstor, side by side with ARTstor collections images and the Visual Resources Collection images. Check out Shared Shelf Commons for the Cornell: Hip Hop Party and Event Flyers collection, the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project, and the Wellesley College: “Serve the People!” Images of Daily Life in China during the Cultural Revolution collection.
Need help accessing or using the JHU Visual Resources Collection in ARTstor? Want a one-on-one training session or a group training session? Contact the VRC at vrc@jhu.edu, and visit the Visual Resources Collection guide for more information and to download our two page guide “Searching for JHU Visual Resources Collection Images in ARTstor.” Need images not available in any of these collections? Click here to access our interactive pdf order form.
For more ways to find images, see the Images page on the library’s Art History guide and see the Finding Images guide.