Access thousands of primary sources (images, documents, films, etc.). Refine search by type, date, source, and subject.

Database of public domain images from the archives of the New York Public Library.

Allows free previews of over three million images pertaining to the performing arts.

A collection of more than 42 million freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute.

Calisphere is the University of California's free public gateway to a world of primary sources. More than 150,000 digitized items — including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, oral histories, and more.

Flickr's Creative Commons portal. Browse by license type or choose "Advanced Search" to limit to Creative Commons content.

Portraits of Actors, 1720-1920, includes almost 3,500 pictures of actors — studio portraits and actors posing in costume for a particular role or performing a scene from a play. Dramatists, theatrical managers, singers and musicians are also included, but the majority are British and American actors who worked between about 1770 and 1893. Among the hundreds of actors included are: Sarah Siddons, Edmund Kean, John Philip Kemble, Edwin Booth, Edwin Forrest, William Henry West Betty, Charles Mathews, Dorothy Jordan, Frances Abington, and Ada Rehan. The images were digitized from etchings, engravings, lithographs, mezzotints, aquatints, wood engravings, photographs, and photomechanically-reproduced prints, all from the University of Illinois Theatrical Print Collection.

The Sayre Collection consists of more than 24,000 photographs of theatrical and vaudeville performers, musicians, and entertainers who played in Seattle between about 1900 and 1955 (some of the materials date back to the 1870s).

The site includes approximately 400 Shakespeare related images from publicity photographs featuring regional production companies --Cleveland's Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada and others; New York stage productions; motion pictures; and televised productions including several highly praised series (The Shakespeare Plays, Hallmark Hall of Fame, etc.)

This site provides a visual chronicle of the artistic productions of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater in the years 1977-1994. The collection presents 1,800 images documenting 195 performances during these 17 seasons.

Collections are searchable, or browsable by time period or category.

The V&A Museum's Theatre and Performance collections include over 3,500 stage costumes and accessories dating from the mid-18th century to today, a selection of which are photographed and available to be viewed online.