East Asian Art

The database contains high quality digital images of objects in the Nation Palace Museum's collection as well as catalog information about each object in English, Chinese and Japanese. It also includes digital copies of Museum periodical publications (1983-2010). The table of contents of every issue is searchable by year of publication and by volume number. Full text downloads and prints are available. Publications are in Chinese.

This site provides high definition images of national treasures and important cultural properties owned by four national museums (Tokyo National Museum, Kyoto National Museum, Nara National Museum and Kyushu National Museum) that belong to the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, together with their descriptions in multiple languages (Japanese, English, French, Chinese and Korean).

You can search for English words or phrases, and for Japanese or Chinese words and phrases.

The Huntington Photographic Archive of Buddhist and Asian Art contains nearly 300,000 original slides and photographs – photographic documentation of art and architecture throughout Asia. Countries covered in the collection include India, Indonesia, Burma, China, and Japan. The documentation covers in situ works of art and architecture ranging from approximately 2500 B.C.E. to the present, as well as pieces found in most major Asian, European, and American museums.

Database of images of Emakimono (picture scrolls) held at the Nichibunken Library.

ARTstor is a not-for-profit organization funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation whose purpose is to develop a database of digital images and accompanying scholarly information for use in art history and other humanistic fields of learning, including the related social sciences. The ARTstor Digital Library includes approximately 300,000 images covering art, architecture and archeology.

CAMIO (Catalog of Art Museum Images Online) contains digital images and detailed descriptions for over 115,000 works of art from major museums in the United States and Canada. Simple or advanced modes allow searching by artist, title of work, date, medium, subject, collection, and location. The standard for image resolution is 1024 x 768 pixels. Images may be printed and exported for educational purposes.

The virtual collection for Chinese rubbings provides access to all currently cataloged and digitized rubbings held by Harvard collections. The virtual collection as of January 2008 includes 1,945 rubbings housed in the Fine Arts Library.

VIA (Visual Information Access) is a growing online union catalog documenting the arts, material culture, and social history. VIA contains descriptive records and images representing paintings, sculpture, photography, drawings, prints, architecture, decorative arts, trade cards, rubbings, theater designs, maps and plans. Participating repositories include archives, museums, libraries, and other collections throughout Harvard University. New material is added to VIA daily.

Among the collections of the Fu-Ssu-Nien Library of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, there are approximately 2200 pieces of rubbings of the Liao, Chin and Yuan dynasties. They contain epitaphs, inscribed scripture, Buddhist inscriptions, poetry, Taoism, Buddhism, sacred edicts and so on