Research Databases for Art History Research
These databases are all good places to start. Oxford Art Online contains scholarly encyclopedia essays with bibliographies and links to images; the other databases will help you find scholarly articles.
- Art Full Text & Art Index RetrospectiveIndexing for hundreds of international art publications, including peer-reviewed journals, yearbooks, and museum bulletins, with full text provided for many.
- Oxford Art OnlineOxford Art Online includes the peer-reviewed, regularly updated Grove Art Online, The Benezit Dictionary of Artists, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, providing access to thousands of articles spanning ancient to contemporary art and architecture, as well as images of works of art, structures, plans, and artist signatures.
Access limited to 3 users at a time. - JSTOROver a thousand full-text scholarly journals and books covering all subjects in the humanities, sciences and social sciences. History, economics, art, literature, and mathematics are particularly strong. All journal titles are archived back to the first issue, many dating from the early 1800s.
- Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) and Répertoire international de la littérature de l'art (RILA)Index to scholarly articles published between 1975 and 2007 on the history of Western art from antiquity to the present.
Other article databases
These databases are good places to also look if you didn't find enough in your initial searches.
- Avery Index to Architectural PeriodicalsA comprehensive index of journal articles published worldwide on architecture and design, archaeology, city planning, interior design and historic preservation.
- Project MUSE - Standard CollectionAn interdisciplinary collection of hundreds of high quality, peer reviewed, scholarly journals in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. All titles in the Standard Collection are full text.
- PASCAL and FRANCISThis resource presents an archive of the PASCAL and FRANCIS bibliographic databases in exact, human and social sciences. It contains millions of multilingual, multidisciplinary citations and abstracts from scholarly journals in STEM subjects, the humanities, social sciences, and economics, and features multiple search modes, as well as the option to browse by keywords (vocabulary) or by thematics (classification).
- Historical Abstracts (EBSCO)Index to scholarly journal articles from international historical journals, covering the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present.
Already have a citation?
If you already have a journal citation from an existing bibliography or some other source, use this tool to find the article:
E-Journals
The library subscribes to more journals electronically than we do in print, and we often have access to more years of a journal online than we do in print, as well. These e-journals are the online equivalents of their print versions. They contain pdfs of the individual articles published in them. The links below will show you all the ways you can link to the full text of that journal. You can browse or search within the journal once you have linked to it.
- Art Bulletin (College Art Association)Available online from 1919 to the present. Several different databases carry this title, so check coverage dates.
- Art HistoryFull text in Academic Search Complete from 1981 to 1 year ago; most current year can be found in the EJC.
- Renaissance QuarterlyAvailable online from 1967 to 1 year ago. Several different databases carry this title, so check coverage dates.
- Renaissance Studies: Journal of the Society for Renaissance StudiesAvailable online from 1987 to the present.
Print Journals
As above, these links connect to the library's catalog, but some of these journals are not available online. Browse them in print by going to the journals section on the east side of the first floor of Jerome Library. All journals are in alphabetical order by title.
- ApolloWe have vol. 145 (1997) to present. Use EBSCO to search for citations to articles in Apollo.
- Sixteenth Century JournalWe have issues from 2012 to the present. Earlier issues of the 16th Century Journal are full text in JSTOR.
Getting full text
While databases like JSTOR contain full text, other databases only contain descriptions of articles. Here's how to get to full text when it's not in the database you're searching:
Click on the "Find it!" link to see if it's available in another database.
If there is full text in another database, you will be taken to the article in that database.
If there is no full text available, you will see a link to Interlibrary Loan (ILL). ILL requests for articles and book chapters are often filled very quickly, because libraries scan the articles and deliver them to you online as a pdf.
Digital Image Databases
- ARTstorARTstor contains collections of digital images with related scholarly information. View the subject guide on Renaissance Studies (pdf) for tips on searching for Renaissance art in ARTstor. Visit this guide for more information on using ARTstor.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art | Collection DatabaseSearch the database of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- National Gallery London/Collection OnlineOptions to search and browse include by time period, subject, artist, etc.
- Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of ArtInteractive timeline of art history with images, essays, and links to the Met collection. Within the timeline, you can pull up a list of objects from the Italian Renaissance within the museum's collection, or browse the timeline's hundreds of essays on Renaissance art.
- The Medici Archive ProjectThe Medici Archive Project is a digitized archival collection spanning the 16th to 18th centuries and including hundreds of thousands of documentary records, images, and biographical entries, including over four million letters from the Medici court dating from 1537-1743. You must register and be approved for an account before you can access the database.