Download 100,000 Free Art Images in High-Resolution from The Getty

When I want to get a good look at the city of Los Ange­les, I go up to the Get­ty Cen­ter in the San­ta Mon­i­ca Moun­tains. I can also, of course, get a pret­ty good look at some art at the muse­um there. But if I don’t feel like mak­ing that trek up the hill — and if you don’t feel like mak­ing the trek from wher­ev­er you live — The Get­ty can give you, in some ways, an even bet­ter way to look at art online. Just vis­it the Get­ty’s Open Con­tent Pro­gram.

See­ing as this sort of free cul­tur­al resource fits right into our wheel­house here at Open Cul­ture, we’ve tried to keep you post­ed on the archive’s devel­op­ment over the past few years. Last time we passed the word along, the Get­ty’s dig­i­tal pub­lic-domain archive of high-res­o­lu­tion images had grown to 87,000, and now it has near­ly hit the 100,000 mark (99,989, to be exact)— which sounds to us like just the time to keep you post­ed on what you can find there­in.

In its cur­rent state (which promis­es fur­ther expan­sion still), the Get­ty’s Open Con­tent Pro­gram offers images like Aban­doned Dust Bowl Home (top image), Dorothea Lange’s vivid­ly stark evo­ca­tion of Depres­sion-era Amer­i­can des­o­la­tion, as well as oth­er pho­to­graph­ic time (and place) cap­sules, such as Kusak­abe Kim­bei’s hand-col­ored prints of life in late 19th- and ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Japan (Japan­ese Ladies pic­tured here); impres­sion­ist can­vas­es like Édouard Manet’s 1878 The Rue Mosnier with Flags; and even views of Los Ange­les itself, like Car­leton Watkins’ shot of the city’s plaza cir­ca 1880.

To down­load an image for which you’ve searched, you first need to click on that image’s title. That link takes you to the image’s own page (like those we linked to in the para­graph just above), where you’ll find a down­load link. Look for the word “down­load” beneath the image, and then click that link. It’s just that sim­ple — far sim­pler, in any case, than visu­al access to such a range of art­work has ever been before. Though if you do make it to Los Ange­les, don’t hes­i­tate to make the effort to vis­it the Get­ty Cen­ter; the tram that takes you up to it makes for a pret­ty fas­ci­nat­ing cul­tur­al expe­ri­ence and view of the city in and of itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Get­ty Adds Anoth­er 77,000 Images to its Open Con­tent Archive

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

Down­load Over 250 Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

40,000 Art­works from 250 Muse­ums, Now View­able for Free at the Redesigned Google Art Project

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.