Visual Resources (Central Eurasian Studies)

REFERENCE:

  • Oxford Art Online (online access to Grove Art Online [Grove Dictionary of Art] and other reference sources; requires IU login

GLOBAL IMAGE ARCHIVES:

  • ArchNet: Images (images of Islamic architectural monuments)
  • ARTstor (over 1.5 million digital images; requires IU log-in)
  • Asianart.com (many useful resources, including a list of associations, exhibitions [with links to online websites], articles, and galleries; "on-line journal for the study and exhibition of the arts of Asia")
  • DIDO: Digital Images Delivered Online (75,000 images encompassing the full breadth of art historical periods and media; from IU's School of Fine Arts)
  • Online Museum Resources on Asian Art (OMuRAA) (index to online Asian art collections, digital image libraries, special exhibitions, and related information; initiative of the Asia for Educators Program at Columbia University)
  • Smithsonian Institution (568,000 images, plus text and audiovisual materials)
  • Visual Information Access (VIA), Harvard University Library (electronic database of visual resources, including historic photographs and other images; search by keyword; full-sized images are restricted to Harvard users, but thumbnail images and other information are visible to all)

CENTRAL EURASIA & CAUCASUS:

  • Central Eurasian Information Resource (CEIR) (University of Washington)
  • Abdul Hamid II Collection (1,819 photographs, dating ca. 1880 to 1893, during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid, r. 1876-1909; collection held by US Library of Congress)
  • Ernst Cohn-Wiener Collection (ArchNet) (a digital collection of hundreds of photographs taken 1924-1925 of architectural monuments in West Turkestan and supplemented by more recent photographs)
  • Images of Russia and the Caucasus Region 1929-1933 (over 700 images of Russia and the Caucasus region, particularly of rural areas in Georgia and Dagestan, taken by William O. Field; William O. Field Collection, American Geographical Society Library of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries)
  • Phototheca Afghanica: Historical Images of Afghanistan (archive currently contains approximately 350 digitized photographs from several small collections; a project of Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica, Switzerland)
  • Prokudrin-Gorskii Collection (2,607 photographic images of the vast Russian Empire--including Central Asia and the Caucasus--made between ca. 1905 and 1915; keyword search; collection held by US Library of Congress)
  • Turkestan Album (Turkestanskii Al’bom) (online copy of this famous work produced under Russian colonial rule, digitized from a copy held by the US Library of Congress; contains approximately 1,200 photographs, architectural plans, drawings, and maps)

SILK ROAD:

  • Digital Silk Road (content in Japanese and English, depending on the project; from the National Institute of Informatics, Japan)
  • International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online (over 300,000 images of manuscripts, paintings, textiles, and artifacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road)
  • Yale Silk Road Database (over 11,000 digitized photographs taken during summers 2006-2010; poorly constructed interface--"browse" collection by using the Search box in upper right)

MONGOLIA:


TIBET AND HIMALAYAS: