The Art Museum Image Consortium, or Amico, was formed in September 1997. It intended to encourage expanded educational use of museum collections in digital form.

The online library was the result of a collaboration of 39 museums, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Newark Museum, who supplied the library with vivid and detailed images

As members of Amico, museums were responsible for stocking the library with high-resolution digital duplicates of artworks from their permanent collections. Although anyone visiting the library's site could search a database of thumbnail-size images and brief catalog descriptions, only educational subscribers had access to larger, more detailed images and the most up-to-date curatorial documentation. Some images were even accompanied by explanatory audio or video clips.

Collaborations as broad as Amico and ARTstor are rare among museums.

Maxwell L. Anderson, an early Amico proponent, said that some museums had at first resisted the notion of creating a common resource. Nothing was more terrifying than the prospect of invidious comparisons of one museum's Impressionist holdings with another's, he said.

But Jennifer Trant, who was Amico's executive director, said many museums also grasped that the opportunity to compare far-flung works while staying in one place would be valuable to art teachers, students and scholars. As much as you want somebody to study your collection, those works get their meaning from context, and context is provided by other works in other collections, she said.

In May 2003, the Amico board members voted to accept an ARTstor proposal that would merge the two institutions under ARTstor's direction.