The Art & Cultural Heritage collection contains art history, historical, and cultural images from collections located at, or licensed by, the University of Kansas. It includes diverse images, such as art objects, architectural images, historical documents and photographs, and archaeological specimens. The images are intended primarily for teaching and research. This collection contains several smaller, special collections that also are listed separately, may be searched separately, and which are open to the public: Spencer Museum of Art (17,000 images), Kansas Collection Photographs (550 images), Kansas City Aerial Photographs (300 images), Kansas City Hopewell Collection (1,700 images), and Florence Nightengale Letters (300 images). It also includes images from the Visual Resource Center of the KU Dept. of the History of Art (12,000 images), art history images licensed from Saskia, Inc. (27,000 images), architectural images from Archivision, Inc. (28,000 images), and images to accompany Stokstad's Art History (3rd ed., 2008) (1,450 images) -- all of which may be viewed only by KU students, faculty and staff.

There are approximately 120,000 images in the collection.