Open Educational Resources (OER)

“Smarthistory is a leading resource for the study of art and cultural heritage. Our growing collection of videos and essays are designed to be engaging and conversational and cover art that ranges from the paleolithic to the present. Everything on Smarthistory is completely free and our content is offered with no advertising.”

An open access repository focused on architecture, urbanism, environmental and landscape design, visual culture, and conservation issues related to the Muslim world.

Using objects from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this resource "tells the story of art and global culture."

"Combining the best elements of both a traditional textbook and a reader, [this book] introduces such issues in art as its meaning and purpose; its structure, material, and form; and its diverse effects on our lives. Its digital nature allows students to follow links to applicable sources and videos, expanding the students' educational experiences beyond the textbook."

“This book aims to act as your map through the world of African art. As such, it will help you define the competencies you need to develop–visual analysis, research, noting what information is critical, asking questions, and writing down your observations–and provide opportunities for you to practice these skills until you are proficient. It will also expose you to new art forms and the worlds that produced them, enriching your understanding and appreciation.”

“American Encounters provides a narrative of the history of American art that focuses on historical encounters among diverse cultures, upon broad structural transformations such as the rise of the middle classes and the emergence of consumer and mass culture, and on the fluid conversations between “high” art and vernacular expressions."

Art appreciation is centered on the ability to view art throughout history, focusing on the cultures and the people, and how art developed in the specific periods. You cannot understand art without understanding the culture, their use of materials and sense of beauty. Art is also conveyed by the simple act of creating art for art’s sake. Every person is born with the innate desire to create art and similar to other professions, training is essential in honing skills to produce art.

Historical developments in Western art from 18th century to the mid-20th century. Focus on European and American art.

This text is based on material primarily from Saylor Academy and Lumen/Boundless Art History with additional images and text from other sources and the author's own contributions. It is suggested for non-art major undergraduates and can be adapted as modules or as a course text.

Currently, there are over 100,000 images from the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute available through the Open Content Program, including more than 72,000 from the Research Institute's Foto Arte Minore archive, which features photographs of the art and architecture of Italy over 30 years by German photographer and scholar Max Hutzel (1913–1988). Other images include paintings, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, antiquities, sculpture, decorative arts, artists' sketchbooks, watercolors, rare prints from the 16th through the 18th century, and 19th-century architectural drawings of cultural landmarks. All of the images can be found on Getty Search Gateway.

Explore more than 490,000 works—from around the world and throughout history—and the research and conversations they inspire, all in the Met's collection.

The Digital Public Library of America is an online repository of 44,601,080 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States. Copyright varies for the content on DPLA, so be sure to check each item!

Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a collection of 82,004,601 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute.