Art History

Welcome

This guide is your starting point for exploring key resources, tools, and strategies for research in the field of art history. Whether you’re studying ancient architecture, medieval manuscripts, or contemporary visual culture, you'll find curated links to books, scholarly articles, image databases, and more. Be sure to explore the “Library DIY” resource, available on the Thrift Library website, which offers step-by-step help for navigating the research process independently. 

Comedy, Pierre Charles Trémolières (French, Cholet 1703–1739 Paris), Oil on canvas

The Return to Court of the Four Graybeards of Mount Shang (left); Su Shi’s Visit to the Wind and Water Cave (right, In the Style of Kano Mitsunobu 狩野光信 (Japanese, 1565–1608), Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, color, gold, and gold leaf on paper , Japan

International Art Museums and Galleries

Art & History Databases

  • ABC-CLIO E-Books
    • 150 e-books on all topics.
  • Academic Search Ultimate
    • Full-text journal articles in social sciences, humanities, multicultural studies, education, and more. (EBSCO)
  • African-American History
    • Explore 500 years of African-American History and Culture. (Infobase)
  • American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection
    • Digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals, documenting the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction-- 1684 to 1912. Includes 8,000 titles. (EBSCO)
  • Associates Programs Source
    • More than 2,200 full-text journals, as well as 350 full-text books. (EBSCO)
  • Audiobooks EBSCOhost
    • EBSCO offers a premium collection of high-quality audiobook titles, giving users 24/7 access to audiobooks that can be downloaded via Android or Apple devices. Click "Search" to see available titles.
  • Biography
    • Nearly a million biographical entries spanning throughout history and geography. (Gale In Context)
  • Britannica
    • Academic Online Edition
      • A comprehensive reference resource used to access Encyclopedia Britannica plus Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus, magazines and periodicals, and many other research tools. This is a great place to find the introductory materials needed to begin a research project.
    • Library Reference Center
      • A reference resource that includes access to Britannica Reference Center for older students and adults.
  • Cambridge Core
    • Contains hundreds of scholarly e-books, but is particularly strong in the humanities and social sciences. Users can limit their searches to library-owned content or use the platform as an index to identify materials available through interlibrary loan. (Cambridge University Press)
  • Credo Reference
    • A comprehensive reference resource that includes images, audio files, videos, and more than 600 full-text reference books on most major subject areas. (Infobase)
  • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
    • This database contains the full test of almost 2,000 open access scientific and scholarly journals on all topics.
  • Duke E-Books Scholarly Collection
    • A site for reading, searching, and sharing over 3,000 Duke University Press books online, that is particularly strong in the humanities and social sciences.
  • E-Book Central
    • This resource hosts 250,000 titles on various topics. Search across the complete word-by-word content of every book. Copy and paste, email, cite, take notes, or share your research within ProQuest E-Book Central.
  • Gale E-Books
    • Gale E-Books (formerly GVRL) contains over 3,500 volumes of encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.
  • E-Books on EBSCOhost
    • Around 200,000 e-books on all topics.
  • Films on Demand
    • A web-based digital video delivery that offers 40,000 high quality videos and multimedia academic content.
  • History Reference eBook Collection
  • History Reference Source
    • Features 1,990 full-text reference books designed for secondary schools, public libraries, and undergraduate research plus full text to 150 history periodicals. Further, the database contains nearly 57,000 historical documents, more than 77,000 biographies of historical figures, more than 37,400 historical photos and maps, and more than 80 hours of historical vidoe. (EBSCO)
  • IGI Global
    • IGI Global disseminates vetted quality content within 11 core subject areas, including business and management; computer science and information technology; education; environment and agriculture; government and law; library and information science; media and communications; medicine and healthcare; science and engineering; security and forensics; as well as social sciences and the humanities.
  • Jewish Studies Source
    • Covers hundred of full text periodicals on Jewish Studies, including 1,600 biographies. (EBSCO)
  • JSTOR
    • JSTOR is a digital library of journals, academic ebooks, images, and primary sources. As of July 2024, includes Artstor: More than 2.5 million digital images - painting, sculpture, photographs, buildings, decorative arts, fashion, landscape, graphic design, architectural drawings, manuscripts, floor plans, and much more.
  • Libby
    • Access a wide range of both academic and recreational e-books and audiobooks purchased by Anderson University and other PASCAL institutions.
  • Liebert Online
    • Fifty-five authoritative journals, all full-text searchable and linked to external bibliographic databases. Topics include: medicine, engineering/informatics, law, psychology, and public health/policy.
  • MasterFILE Premier
    • MasterFILE Premier contains full text for general reference magazines and publications covering a wide range of subject areas including: business, health, education, general science, and multicultural issues. It also includes an extensive image collection of more than 2 million photos, maps, and flags. (EBSCO)
  • Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
    • The historical English dictionary: an unsurpassed guide for researchers in any discipline to the meaning, history, and usage of over 500,000 words and phrases across the English-speaking world. The OED is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language.
  • Open Access Theses and Dissertations
    • Advanced research and scholarship. Theses and dissertations, free to find, free to use.
  • Open Dissertations/American Doctoral Dissertations
    • Open access dissertations and theses from 1955 to present. (EBSCO)
  • Primary Search Reference E-Book Collection
  • Project MUSE
    • Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social sciences content. All book content on MUSE is presented DRM-free chapter-level PDFs, with unlimited simultaneous usage, unlimited downloading, and unlimited printing.
  • SAGE
    • Journals
      • Search and browse more than a thousand journals across a range of disciplines.
    • Knowledge
      • An e-book platform for topics across the social sciences
    • Research Methods
      • Supports research at all levels by providing material and tools to guide users through every step of the research process. Provides access to e-books, datasets, podcasts, and video. Available tools include a project planner, methods map, and stats test.
  • Salem E-Books
    • Over 400 reference books on careers, health, history, literature, and science.
  • Science Reference E-Book Collection
  • Taylor & Francis E-Books
    • A collection of e-books on all topics. Users have access only to unlocked titles, as indicated by the lock icon.
  • TOPICsearch
    • Contains full text of over 140,000 articles from nearly 260 diverse sources including international newspapers, periodicals, biographies, public opinion polls, book reviews, pamphlets, and government information. (EBSCO)

Collected Resources

Antoinette, Michelle. Reworlding Art History: Encounters with Contemporary Southeast Asian Art after 1990. 1st ed. Cross/Cultures 178. Rodopi, 2014.
Arnold, Dana. Art History: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions 102. Oxford University Press, 2004.
Gray, Maggie, and Ian Horton. Seeing Comics through Art History: Alternative Approaches to the Form. Springer International Publishing, 2022. 
Harris, Jonathan. Art History: The Key Concepts. Routledge, 2006.
Hecker, Sharon and Marin R. Sullivan.  Postwar Italian Art History Today  Untying “the Knot.” Bloomsbury
Academic, 2018.
Johnson, W. McAllister. Art History: Its Use and Abuse. University of Toronto Press, 1990. 
Morton, Erin. Unsettling Canadian Art History. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022. 
Normore, Christina. Re-Assessing the Global Turn in Medieval Art History. 1st ed. The Medieval Globe ; Volume 3. ARC Humanities Press, 2018.