One hundred years ago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened the doors of its library's new home to art historians, students, and the general public. The Museum's founders understood the essential role of a library in fulfilling the institution's mission. In fact, the original 1870 New York State charter specifically committed the new institution to "establishing and maintaining . . . a Museum and library of art." (See the Now at the Met blog post, "Today in Met History: April 13" for more about the Museum's charter.) The library was formally established in 1880, and today it shares the Museum's distinction of being among the world’s greatest treasuries for the study of the arts of many cultures.
Walking though the galleries of your favorite museum can generate many questions about the lives of the artists whose works are on view. Artist biographical dictionaries can help answer these questions. Researchers visiting the Reading Room of the Frick Art Reference Library find cabinets dedicated to the lives of American and European artists, including such gems as The Dictionary of 19th Century British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists (1996) and An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West (1998).
The sequel is a notoriously dicey—though sometimes brilliant—film enterprise, be it Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Empire Strikes Back, or my personal favorite at the age of twelve, The Karate Kid, Part II. After the first round of 30 Seconds videos, in which MoMA staff and members created short videos with filmmaker Thilo Hoffmann, we invited Thilo back late last year. The results are in, and you can now see selected videos by staff and members.
If you're like me and on a computer all day long, you look for searching short-cuts whenever possible. Now you can save yourself a click by installing NYARC catalog search plugins for Firefox and Internet Explorer. These plugins allow you to search the NYARC catalogs using the search box on the top right of your browser. They'll save you a click and speed up your searching.
Since its conscious decision in 1970 to begin actively collecting artists’ books, the Brooklyn Museum Library has amassed a varied and substantial collection comprised of over 2,500 titles, and further supported by numerous artists’ files, and related exhibition catalogues and relevant publications. Now, with the recently acquired Smoller Gift, generously donated to the Brooklyn Museum from Arnold Smoller, the collection has been further enriched and expanded by the inclusion of over 40 artists’ books and livres d’artiste.
On Thursday, April 22, the MoMA Library and Esopus Foundation Ltd. co-hosted an evening celebrating the life and work of physicist-artist Bern Porter (1911–2004). I organized the event to breathe life into the books and other ephemera on display in the exhibition Lost and Found: The Work of Bern Porter from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art Library and to call more attention to this fascinating and under-recognized artist.
Released by The Frick Art Reference Library, this database contains bibliographies, alternative names, and basic biographical information on more than 5,000 Spanish artists from the fourth to the twentieth century. Entries cross-reference materials from the Frick’s internationally-known photoarchive collection. The Dictionary links to other resources, such as Arcade and WorldCat, allowing researchers to easily locate items held at institutions worldwide related to a particular artist.