For the art lover in all of us

While back in my heyday I could claim a certain competence in the realm of art, I have let all that falter in the pursuit of more general and lucrative practices. Having said that, clearly one of the most under rated components of the web is the unmitigated access to image directories. Some of my favorites:

• Agent 002 - mostly illustrators for popular French publications, but there are some real gems in their collection if you like modern advertising art
• Veer - who says clip art has to be lame and stodgy?
• Conde Nast Art - the publishers of Vogue, Vanity Fair, and other such pinnacles of publication style have a lovely collection which you can turn into prints, note cards, and the like.
• Pixelgirl - your desktop need be ungarnished no longer
• Artchive - one man's fight to keep all the old favorites in circulation on the web
• APOD Image Directory - a directory of images taken by and created by various NASA equipment and agencies
• The University of Chicago Photo Files - a series of archived photos from the University of Chicago
• NOAA - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration houses pictures from a conglomeration of science agencies, including the Survey of the Coast, the Weather Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
• Opera Gloves - A directory of fashion photos from the 20s through to today featuring models wearing opera gloves as an embellishment.

The photos are really fascinating - especially the NASA photos of Hurricane Ivan

and the NOAA photos of weather in the early 1900s