Where Bloggers Can Find More & Better Art for Free
Pepita (detail), c. 1917, Oil on Canvas by Robert Henri, Cincinnati, Ohio
In a previous blog post entitled Four Reasons to Purchase Quality Images, I made the case that it is very important for bloggers to use quality photos and that the best way to do so is to buy them. Human beings are visual creatures first and so there is no quicker way to turn them off than to have shoddy photos at the top of a blog post.
Of course, humans are also cheapskates, which is why free picture sites are so popular. Unfortunately, it makes for a very repetitive web experience as those pictures are used repeatedly. Even when they are edited and cropped, the fact is that there ought to be more options.
This is especially important for those of us who blog about more than the latest “become a millionaire while sitting on the beach” fad or the “top five ways to generate more followers on Instagram.” Yes, there are those of us who blog about science, the arts, and history and who have a much more difficult time finding relevant images for those topics.
Well, it turns out there are resources for us too, and it is free. More importantly, most of these images are available for unlimited commercial use as well. You do need to check the instructions on the website, but I have been hugely impressed with how much is freely usable for any purpose.
There was a time…
When I was little my parents used to drag me to the most boring places when we went on vacation: museums. I hated the experience. Most of the time we had to be quiet too. For a 5-year-old kid, that is no fun at all.
As other forms of entertainment like TV and movies gained popularity, museums started to see a slump in visitors – perhaps they should not have made it so boring for us kids… Then when the internet surged in the early 2000’s most of the artwork, scientific discoveries, and famous people in those museums could be found online, which then further reduced the number of visitors.
Then the pandemic hit them hard. All those museum employees would eventually find themselves out of work. I cannot be certain that this was a watershed moment, but it seems that it was last summer that I noticed that museums were finally opening their collections to the online world for free. My guess is that they are hoping that this will generate a renewed interest that will eventually lead back to more visitors – kind of the Apple computers for schools model of the 90’s.
Bloggers of the world, rejoice!
If my theory is true, this free-for-all may not last. So, this is the time to make use of the vast collections that museums are making available for free online. Below, I have listed some of my favorite collections that have been made available online.
While also contributing to the Wikimedia database of art, The National Gallery of Art has made over 50,000 images available on their own site.
Clocks: Various Types of Clock Mechanisms, c.1850s - Engraving by Joseph Wilson Lowry
The Welcome Library in London has made over 100,000 images available in their online Welcome Collection. Unlike other museums on this list, their collection specializes in images of science and biology.
The NARA has tens of thousands of free images, many of which are now available via Flickr.com as well. It is an ideal source for photos about American history.
The LACMA museums have made over 20,000 images available for public use in a simple to use online database. It is also one of the easier web pages to find just the image you need.
The Getty Museum has made over 100,000 images of paintings, manuscripts, drawings, and photographs available. Of note is the collection of historic photographs such as the one from Brazil in the 19th century, above.
NOAA has thousands of images on topics from weather to nature to science. Unline many of the other collections, most of their photos are more recent and, perhaps more importantly, in color. Perfect for that environmental issue blog!
Enthroned Buddha Attended by the Bodhisattvas Avalokiteshvara and Vajrapani, 10th century
One of the most famous museums in the world, the Met has made 375,000 images available in the public domain, easily searchable and viewable. As seen above, not all art is 2-dimensional, either and the Met has a large collection of photos of sculptures, textiles, and other media. Also of note is that their website also includes audio descriptions with each image.
Mars Curiosity Rover on the Surface of Mars, c. August 2020-NASA/JPL-Caltech
Until Tesla starts regular tourist flights into orbit, NASA is one of the best sources for images of our solar system and beyond. Yes, if you are writing about Sci-Fi or extraterrestrial life, NASA might just have the photo you need to make your blog stand out. They have thousands of images available on their site, all freely useble.
Free as in beer…
This is an expression that comes from the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement. It means that some things in life are free for consumption right then and there, but it does not mean they are free all the time everywhere and indefinitely. While our tax dollars essentially paid for many of these collections of images, many are also still privately owned. It is a wonderful thing that so many of them are now available for free, but that understanding should come with some common sense.
Just as when you go trick-or-treating and you can pick candy from a bowl, that does not mean you should grab all of it. It is selfish, it is a bummer for whoever comes after you, and you won’t be able to eat it all without getting really sick. You are much better off taking a few pieces and savoring them.
The same is true for free images – take what you need and leave the rest for others. Museums will not continue to do this if we download these in masse and start selling them in our Etsy stores. Even if we can do that we should not for obvious reasons.
Something else to mention is that while most of the images are available for free and even for unlimited commercial use, this varies by museum and by collection. So please take the time to read what the rights are for the images. Even when they are free, it is still considered good practice to reference the source for the image whenever possible.
As a side note, referencing the art helps search engines add the appropriate metadata to the images. Many people and services use the web in a text-only fashion and accurate metadata allows images to be processed properly by these engines. Of course, this is not just good etiquette, it also helps visually impaired visitors identify the images.
Conclusion
I sincerely hope that all museums open their exhibit images to the world. This is a huge opportunity for bloggers everywhere. I only discovered this last summer myself, but I sure intent to make use of it extensively. Since blog posts can live or die by that top image, this is hugely important for finding a renewed interest in my history, science, and art articles.
Whatever the real reason is that museums are doing this, there is another important side-effect of this momentous decision. If the museums are indeed attempting to generate a renewed interest in art, science, and history, then they are doing it at just the right time as the new government in Washington is pushing for a renewed respect for science, data, and facts.
This could be a perfect storm of converged interests that will resuscitate schools, businesses, and innovation not just for a new generation of children, but for everyone. We could be on the verge of a new century of innovation and achievements the likes of which we have not seen in some time.
I fully expect the arts, the hard sciences, and the soft sciences to recover in the next decade. I have already mentioned it in other blog posts that I have seen signs of this in many other industries already. So yes, a picture is worth a thousand words, but it is worth far more than that.
Use these images as you see fit, knowing that with this small act you too are contributing to the rebuilding of the world as we know it!