In the Instructional Resource Center

Artstor’s ever-growing Public Collections offer approximately 1.3 million freely accessible images, videos, documents, and audio files from library special collections, faculty research, and institutional history materials, as well as hundreds of thousands of open access images from partner museums. Anyone may view and download these collections; no subscription or login required.

The Art in the Christian Tradition (ACT) database is a regularly updated visual image internet resource. Designed for scholars, students, pastors, and religious educators, all of the images may be used for non-commercial purposes, with attribution. There are currently 7005 images in the collection.

The ACT is linked to another Vanderbilt Divinity Library internet resource, the Revised Common Lectionary. This linking allows leaders of worship and teachers to easily find visual art resources related to the scripture readings for each Sunday in the church calendar.

In the last few years, several major museums and libraries have instituted an open access policy by designating most or all of the public domain art in their
collections with a creative commons license making them available for use for any purpose with no restrictions attached.

Artvee sorts through and aggregate the best of these images in one location to make them easy to discover and download. Many of them are duplicated in the ArtStor Public Collection.