Dr. Theodore Feder established Art Resource in 1968, while he was a graduate student and instructor in Art History at Columbia University. He had no way of predicting then, let alone assuring, the future growth of the company. Indeed for the first year Art Resource operated out of Dr. Feder’s apartment near the University. His classes occasionally met there as well, neutral territory during the turbulent days of Columbia’s student strike and the crack-down that followed.

The company’s original name was the rather unwieldy Editorial Photocolor Archives. No fear, we intended to use the acronym EPA, only to find two years later that it had suddenly become notorious as the initials for the newly founded Environmental Protection Agency. Our change of name to the more descriptive Art Resource followed in due course.

As it happened, Art Resource did experience steady growth in the subsequent years, as it was able to forge alliances with numerous museums and art history photo archives in the U.S. and abroad. Today, it is fair to say that the holdings of these various collections, taken together, comprise the single largest body of high quality fine art images available anywhere.

Among the museums for which Art Resource functions as the official rights and permissions representatives are: The National Museum of American Art, The National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Jewish Museum of New York, the Newark Museum, the Tate Gallery of London, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Alexander and Louisa Calder Foundation.

Art Resource also represents a number of major European archives of art and architecture, including Scala Fine Arts and Fratelli Alinari of Florence, Photographie Giraudon of Paris, Bildarchiv Foto Marburg of Germany, the Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archive of Vienna, and the photographic holdings of the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Werner Forman Archive of London and the Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN).

Art Resource also has very extensive holdings of works of art from major European museums and world monuments, including: the Acropolis, Alte Pinakothek, Egyptian Museum of Cairo, the Hermitage, Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, Louvre, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Musée d’Orsay, Musée Picasso, Museo Nazionale of Naples, Pitti Palace, Pompeii, Prado, Pushkin Museum, Sistine Chapel, Staatliche Museen of Berlin, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Uffizi, and the Vatican Museums.