Art & Art History: A Guide to Library Research

Artstor is migrating to the JSTOR platform. Migration will be complete on August 1, 2024, and all Artstor URLs will redirect to the new platform for at least another year. We recommend updating any bookmarks or saved links from the old platform. 

 

Artstor provides over 3 million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences, including an accessible suite of software tools for teaching and research. Community-built collections comprise contributions from outstanding international museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates.

Collections are used for teaching and study in a wide range of subject areas, including art, architecture, music, religion, anthropology, literature, world history, American Studies, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, and more. All UM affiliates may search and view images; registration required to download images and use the software tools.

Note: To access the images via the mobile interface, you need to create an account through ARTstor. Access ARTstor via the library's website and click on the "Register" link at top right. Create an account; use that email / password to login to ARTstor mobile.

Old Artstor platform

Subjects covered:

• European art since late antiquity
   
• American art since the colonial period
   
• Global art since 1945
   
• Fine art in all media
   
• Decorative arts and antiques
   
• Museum studies and conservation
   
• Archaeology and material culture
   
• Folk art
   
• Architectural history
   

Covers 1975-2007. The name BHA has been used informally to refer to a group of databases: RAA, RILA, BHA, and IBA. The data available on the Getty Web site comprises two of these databases: BHA and RILA. BHA (Bibliography of the History of Art/Bibliographie d'histoire de l'art) covers the years 1990-2007; the Getty Web version includes all records with abstracts in French or English and all subject terms in French and English. RILA (Rpertoire de la litterature de l'art) covers 1975-1989. At present, the Getty has no plans to add RAA (Rpertoire d'art et d'archologie), which covers 1973-1989. IBA (International Bibliography of Art), covering 2008 to the present, is a separate subscription-only database from ProQuest that is not included on this free website provided by Getty.

Art Full Text: 1984-present. Provides examples of styles and art movements, including works by emerging artists. Covers fine, decorative, and commercial art, folk art, photography, film, and architecture, and a database-specific thesaurus.

Art & Architecture Source: The largest full-text art research database covering fine, decorative and commercial art, architecture and architectural design. Strong international coverage, art journals, magazines and books, detailed indexing and abstracts, and thousands of images.

Includes these collections:

• Essay and General Literature Index: 1985-present. Archaeology, architecture, art, children's literature, classical studies, drama, economics, fiction, film , folklore, history, linguistics, music, poetry, political science, religion, women's studies.
   
• Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984: Covers a broad range of subject coverage in the humanities and social sciences with high-quality indexing of more than 1,300,000 articles in nearly 1,100 periodicals, dating as far back as 1907, as well as citations of over 240,000 book reviews.
   
• Humanities Abstracts: Detailed indexing for almost 700 periodicals covering the humanities—of which 470 are peer-reviewed—dating as far back as 1984, including feature articles, interviews, bibliographies, obituaries, and original works of fiction, drama, poetry and book reviews, as well as reviews of ballets, dance programs, motion pictures, musicals, radio and television programs, plays, operas, and more.
   
• Humanities Full Text: 1984-present. Covers archaeology, art, classics, film, folklore, food, journalism, linguistics, music, performing arts, philosophy, religion, space, world history, world literature.
   
• Humanities Source: Covers literary, scholarly and creative thought. It provides full text, indexing, and abstracts for the most noted scholarly sources in the humanities.