General Resources

• Search the Philadelphia Museum of Art Online Catalog
• Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives Finding Aids

Databases and Indexes

• AATA Online: Abstract of International Conservation Literature (IIC Abstracts)
  (1955-present)
• Art Index/Art Index Retrospective  (1929-present)  
  This database comprises an international array of peer-selected publications—with expanded coverage of Latin American, Canadian, Asian and other non-Western art, new artists, and contemporary art. These records include the Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin in company with other select museum bulletins and yearbooks, as well as artists' interviews and book reviews.
• ARTbibliographies Modern  (1984-present)  
  The ABM functions as both an indexing and abstracting tool for art and design topics starting in the nineteenth century. Entries include books, journal articles, dissertations, essays, exhibition catalogues and exhibition reviews. ABM covers all aspects of modern and contemporary art including performance art, installations art, video art, computer and electronic art, body art, graffiti, artists’ books, crafts, jewelry and illustration in addition to the traditional fine arts of painting, printmaking, sculpture and drawing.
• ARTstor  
  ARTstor is a digital image resource of hundreds of thousands of images for noncommercial, educational, and scholarly use. Images are contributed from institutions such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Frick Collection, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
• AskART  
  This tool includes information about more than 34,000 American artists from pre-Columbus settlers through modern expressionists. Artist biographies and auction records are amongst the data compiled.
• Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA/RILA/RAA)  (1973-present)  
  The BHA covers European and American visual arts from late antiquity to the present. This database indexes and abstracts art-related books, conference proceedings and dissertations, exhibition and dealers' catalogs, and articles from over 4,300 periodicals. The citations encompass fine arts and decorative and applied arts including painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, architecture, crafts, graphic arts, folk, and popular art. BHA includes and extends the coverage of its two predecessor art indexes: Répertoire d'Art et d'Archéologie (RAA) from 1973 to 1989 and International Repertory of the Literature of Art (RILA) from 1975 to 1989.
• CAMIO  
The CAMIO Library is The Art Museum Image Consortium's multimedia resource of more than 100,000 representations of works of art with descriptive material from leading museums. Every work has at least one high-resolution image and basic cataloging information to describe it. Many also feature enhanced information such as curatorial notes, provenance data, conservation history, sound, video, exhibition catalogs, bibliographic citations, and additional views of the work. New works are added annually and everything is rights-cleared for educational use.
• Design and Applied Arts Index (daai)  (1973-present)  
  daai on WWW currently contains over 130,000 annotated references from more than 500 design and craft journals published between 1973-2002, and data on over 50,000 designers, craftspeople, studios, workshops, firms etc., making the largest database of its kind in the world. daai on WWW also contains four ongoing supplementary databases: international directories of design and craft courses, design and craft organizations, design and craft archives and design and craft journals.
• Digital Library for Decorative Arts and Material Culture  
  This site provides access to various documents and full-text publications as well as links to decorative arts-related resources. The latter include libraries and archives, museums, and directories to name a few.
• Encyclopedia Britannica Online  
  This version of the EB Online supplies links to internet sites related to articles in the search result.
• Eureka  
  Eureka (The RLG Union Catalog) is a bibliographic database of over 48 million titles contributed by various libraries in the United States and around the world. These materials includes formats such as books, journals and other continuing publications, electronic resources, archives, scores, and more. In addition to full bibiographic data, records indicate institutional holdings.
• Getty Provenance Index Databases  
  This site is comprised of three main databases managed by the Getty Research Institute: Archival Documents (1550-1840), Sale Catalogs (1650-1840), and Public Collections (1500-1990).
• Groves Dictionary Art Online  
  Groves offers comprehensive searchable data for all aspects of the visual arts worldwide from prehistory to the present day. The many search options include full text, biographies, bibliographies, external image links, contributors, captions, indexes and appendices. Descriptions of images in the Bridgeman Art Library collection are also available, however, due to copyright issues images may not be available.
• Index to 19th-Century American Art Periodicals  (1840-1907)  
  Covering 42 periodicals published in the United States during the 19th century, this database is the sole online index to virtually all the art journals published in that period. The entire contents of each issue is indexed—articles, art notes, illustrations, stories, poems, and advertisements. This makes the Index to 19th-Century American Art Periodicals—in addition to its coverage of artists and illustrators, painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, architecture and design, exhibitions and sales, decoration, and collecting—a highly valuable source of information on popular culture and industry.
• Index of Christian Art  
  The Index records works of art produced without geographical limitations from early apostolic times up to A.D. 1400 with a particular emphasis and focus on art of the western world. The term "Christian" is broadly construed and is not restricted to art produced within ecclesiastical contexts or theological in theme.
• JSTOR  
  JSTOR provides electronic access to full-text articles of many scholarly publications critical to art historical research and other fields of study in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. The JSTOR archive contains nearly 19 million pages from 553 scholarly journals, including over 50 art journals, which can be downloaded or printed.
• Philadelphia Buildings Project (PAB)  
  The PAB database is available freely to the public and covers buildings, biographies, and more for architecturally related data concerning primarily the Philadelphia area.
• Photographers database (George Eastman House)  
  The records of the George Eastman House in this text only database are static as of November 11, 2002. This resource provides biographical information as well as some bibliographic citations. The following list comprises search possibilities as maker, maker by nationality, geographic place, subjects, exhibition history, and institutional exhibition and holdings records to name a few. (ie. Though not comprehensive, some data related to Philadelphia Museum of Art photographic exhibitions and holdings are found in this database.)
• Public Art in Philadelphia  
  This gateway to Philadelphia's public art offers research tools and resources as well as an artist/title search for sculptors in Philadelphia. Links include listings of General Public Art Sites, National Public Art Programs, International Public Art Programs & Sites, Sculpture Gardens & Parks, Maintenance & Conservation, and Philadelphia Reference & Research.
• Pre-1877 Art Exhibition Catalogue Index (AECI)  
  The AECI, produced by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is comprised of 136,494 records describing fine art works exhibition in the USA and Canada up through 1876. The exhibitions represented here exclude already published exhibition summaries such as those from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
• Print Council of America: Index to Print Catalogues Raisonne (IPCR)  
  This is the online version of The Print Council Index to Oeuvre-Catalogues of Prints by European and American Artists by Timothy A. Riggs, expanded and brought up-to-date by Lauren B. Hewes.
• Union List of Artists Names (ULAN)  
  Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) is a structured vocabulary of artist names and biographical information produced and maintained by the Getty Vocabulary Program at the Getty Research Institute. Entries include variant names, pseudonyms, and language variants.
• The World Wide Web Virtual Library: History of Art  
  The History of Art Virtual Library is a collection of links relating to Art History and computer applications in Art History. The site is sponsored by CHArt, the Computers and History of Art Group. Though not comprehensive for all areas of academic study in Art History, the scope of content is international.

Auction Resources

• Art Sales Catalogues Online/Lugt Repertoire Online  
  (ASC is FULL TEXT)

  Art Sales Catalogues (1600-1860) Lugt's (1600-1900)

  Search the full text catalogues covering sales represented in Lugt Répertoire Online, also available on this site. Some catalogs are not available in full text format, however, IDC Publishers will add them in the future.

• Art Sales Index Online  (1980-present*)  
  ASI extracts information from auction catalogues, price lists and other information provided by auctioneers. Subjects covered: oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, sculpture, miniatures (since 1991), prints (over £2,000 since 1995), photographs (over £2,000 since 1999).

  * Retrospective entries in process; some categories start date in the 1990s

• Artfact 
  More than six million auction catalog records including antiques, art, and collectible objects.
• Artprice.com  (1987-present)  
  This reference data bank on the art market covers 306,000 artists from the 4th C. to present in the following fine art categories: drawing-watercolour, painting, tapestry, prints, posters, sculpture-installation, photography and Audiovisual & Multimedia. Art auctions data from 2,900 auction houses are collected, processed and analyzed daily at Artprice.
• Gordon's Photography Index   (1970-present)  
  Over 150,000 international auction and dealer sales for photographs of all styles and periods. Entries encompass 19th, 20th, and 21st century photographs as well as books and periodicals with original photographs.
• Gordon's Print Price Annual   (1985-present)  
  These more than 675,000 international auction results cover Old Master, Modern, and Contemporary Fine Prints; Decorative, Historical, Sporting, Topographical, Natural History, Botanical, and Japanese Prints; Fine Art, Vintage and Film Posters; Illustrated books, Livres d'Artiste, Books and Periodicals with Original Graphics; Picasso Ceramics.
• SCIPIO: Art and Rare Book Sales Catalogs  (1599-present)  
  This is the only online union catalog of auction catalog records in existence. This RLG Library Resource provides bibliographic access to valuable sources of information on the provenance of art objects and rare books, the history of collecting, and contemporary and historical market trends. SCIPIO describes art and rare book auction sales catalogs dating from the late sixteenth century to currently scheduled auctions that have not yet been held. Records contain information on dates and places of sale, catalog title, the auction house, sellers, institutional holdings, and other information. SCIPIO consists of records for auction sales catalogs from all major North American and European auction houses as well as important private sales.