Contains full textbooks and course materials created by scholars and professionals in the field. Recommended to do a search for the term “art history,” to see art history specific resources.
Open Textbook Library: Arts
Organized by the Open Education Network, based in the Center for Open Education at the University of Minnesota. Art history resources are interspersed with other arts content in the arts section, and include titles like American Encounters (2018), The Bright Continent: African Art History (2018), and Guide to Byzantine Art (2021), to name a few. Utilized Creative Commons licenses, as most OER do.
Specific to American craft, the digital collections feature “thousands of unique images, documents, and media.detail[ing] the history of contemporary craft in America.” Of particular interest might be the Craft Horizons / American Craft magazine, among other resources.
Art History Teaching Resources
Art History Teaching Resources is a peer-populated platform for art history teachers. AHTR is home to a constantly evolving and collectively authored online repository of art history teaching content including, but not limited to, lesson plans, video introductions to museums, book reviews, image clusters, and classroom and museum activities.” Funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the CUNY Graduate Center.
The Canadian Online Art Book Project
Founded in 2013, this digital library focuses on original books commissioned by the Art Canada Institute. Artists featured include Walter S. Allward, Molly Lamb Bobak, and Shuvinai Ashoona, to name a few.
Dariah Teach
An Open Educational Resources (OER) platform for Digital Arts and Humanities educators and students. Content on dariahTeach is designed to be asynchronously accessed by both lone learners, especially those who do not have access to digital arts and humanities teaching and training, as well as educators who can embed content into their own course offerings.
Contains essays, images of works of art, and chronologies pertinent to the global history of art. Essays included credit their author and specify their affiliation(s); however, most essays are written by curatorial staff at The Met.
Open Art Histories (OAH)
“...a platform for art, art history, visual art, communication and museum studies teachers and instructors in Canada.” Though its content is Canadian in focus, may still be of interest, as it does contain OER and is a virtual community and repository for art and art history instructors.
SmARThistory
Created by a collaborative group of more than five hundred art historians, curators, archaeologists, and artists, SmARThistory looks to make art history less colonial and more equitable, and all content on the site has undergone an open peer-review process – plus every essay links to its author and their credentials. They do have a textbook that’s recently been released as an OER, though there are mixed reviews from fellow art library professionals and art historians – main detractors state that it is still a work in progress, and not quite ready for the classroom.
