Islamic Architecture, Art, and Urbanism Library Resources

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Islamic Architecture,
Art, and Urbanism
Visual Resources

Image Databases

Academic and Institutional Databases

Abdul Hamid II Collection (Library of Congress)
nearly 2,000 images from the Abdul Hamid II large-format albums, dating from 1880-1893 and depicting the Ottoman Empire primarily in Turkey; available as uncompressed TIFF files

AMICO (Art Museum Image Consortium)
thumbnails only without subscription

Art Images for College Teaching (AICT) (Minneapolis College of Art and Design)
Islamic Spain only; includes bibliographic references for additional reproductions

ArtServe (Australian National University)
good selection of high-resolution images; but many dead links

CIM - Cairo Islamic Monuments (government of Egypt)
English version text has many mistakes but historical and contemporary images are excellent

Cities/Buildings Database (University of Washington)
keyword search is better than City and Country search

Courtauld Institute
high-resolution images of Islamic architecture

The Creswell Archive
at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England; more than 6,000 black & white images of medieval architecture of the Islamic world by the reknowned scholar K.A.C. Creswell

Digital Imaging Project (Bluffton College)
excellent resource but with only a few images of works by architects of the Islamic world

ECAI Iraq
an excellent aggregation of digital resources pertaining to the cultural history of present-day Iraq; images, maps, descriptive data and text

Fondation Arabe pour l'Image (Arab Image Foundation)
collections of historical and contemporary photographs from the Middle East and North Africa

Gertrude Bell Archives
rich collection of photographs taken in the early 20th C; good resolution, zoomable, with descriptive data

Harvard University Library Visual Information Access (VIA)
for images, tick ‘restrict search to records that have digital images’

Hermitage Museum Digital Collection
mostly decorative arts

ImageBase (Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco)
Islamic minor arts and historical and cultural images; some architectural works

Isfahan (Anglia Polytechnic University)
site is difficult to navigate; images not high resolution and best used for reference; list of sites available

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
browse the online catalog of its diverse collections

Library of University of California Images (LUCI)
high-resolution images available only to local users

Louvre Museum
go to Collections -> Selected Works -> Oriental Antiquities or -> Islamic Art
or to the Atlas database and tick box for Illustrated works only; search must be in French

Matson Collection (Library of Congress)
more than 7,500 images of the Middle East between 1898 and 1946; high-res JPEGs and uncompressed TIFFs available for download

Metropolitan Museum Timeline of Art History
many images of Islamic minor arts and ornamental styles, fewer of architecture; excellent reference for architectural periods

Middle East Photo Archive (University of Chicago)
early photographs of the Middle East and Near East

New York Public Library Picture Collection
some illustrations for search terms ‘muslim’ or 'islamic'

Photocrom Collection (Library of Congress)
about 5,000 color images—many of the Middle East—date from the late 19th C; available as high-resolution JPEGs and uncompressed TIFFs

Produkin-Gorskii Collection (Library of Congress)
beautiful, early 20th-century images of Soviet Central Asia—architecture, people

SPIRO (University of California, Berkeley)
rich collection of thumbnails with descriptive data

Symmetry & Pattern: the Art of Oriental Rugs
site by the Textile Museum (Washington D.C.) and the Math Forum (Drexel University)

World Heritage Centre UNESCO
limited number of images

 

Nonacademic Databases

archINFORM
high-resolution images and descriptive data for Islamic architecture

ARCspace.com
especially rich for modern and contemporary architecture

Artcyclopedia
limited for Islamic art and architecture: some minor arts and photographs

Asian Historical Architecture
good reference source for sites in Southeast Asia, Afghanistan; more limited for the Far East; includes interactive maps of sites, image copyright and descriptive information, and bibliographic references

Cartography Associates' Visual Collections
site offering free access to collections from a number of institutions

Early Islamic Tiles (Anthony Slate-Ralph Fine Art)
images of tiles collected during late 19th century

Images of Africa
descriptive data consists only of village name; 300dpi images available for download

Images from the past
historical photographs (including selection of photos by A. Bonfils) and illustrations from Lebanon and the Levant

Great Buildings Online - Islamic Architecture
12 built works with descriptive data and bibliographic references; good resolution images

Photographs of Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine & Egypt
by Luke Powell, includes many architectural works

Sacred Sites
by Martin Gray, images of select Islamic sites in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East

Structurae
structures and large projects; basic descriptive data and good resolution images; search is easiest by geographic location

VILAR: Virtual Landscape Gallery
Parks, gardens, landscape design; (few Islamic---Topkapi Palace in Turkey, the Alhambra in Spain)

 

Commercial Sources

AMICO (Art Museum Image Consortium)

Archivision

Art Resource

ARTSTOR

Bridgeman Art Library

Canyon Lights

Corbis

Davis Art Slides

Dupuy Art Images (Scala Slides)

Landslides Aerial Photography

Media for the Arts

Mother of All Art and Art History Links Page

RLG Cultural Materials

Saskia Ltd.

University of Michigan Slide Distribution

Visual Resource Association's Image Providers Directory

 

Image Portals for the Islamic World

Art History Resources on the Web

Artifact

The WWW Architecture Virtual Library




This page was last updated on 04/22/08
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