The Berlin Art Library () is an agency of the

Berlin State Museums The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Berlin State Museums) are a group of institutions in Berlin, Germany, comprising seventeen museums in five clusters; several research institutes; libraries; and supporting facilities. They are overseen by the ...

under the auspices of the

Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (; SPK) is a German federal government body that oversees 27 museums and cultural organizations in and around Berlin, Germany. Its purview includes all of Berlin's State Museums, the Berlin State Librar ...

. It has approximately 400,000 volumes and ranks among Germany's leading institutions specializing in the literature of

Art History Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Tradit ...

. The library is located on the

Kulturforum The Kulturforum () is a collection of cultural buildings in Berlin. It was built up in the 1950s and 1960s at the edge of West Berlin, south of the Tiergarten, after most of the once unified city's cultural assets had been lost behind the Ber ...

Berlin-Tiergarten Tiergarten (, literally ''Animal Garden'', historically meaning ''deer park'' or hunting ''game park'') is a locality within the borough of Mitte, in central Berlin (Germany). Notable for the great and homonymous urban park, before German reunifi ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

and attracts 35,000 visitors annually. The Library also has a comprehensive photographic collection. Its holdings date back to the very early days of photography, through

Pictorialism Pictorialism is an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer ha ...

around the late 19th and early 20th centuries, through the Neues Sehen or ''New Vision'' of the 1920s, to the new artistic styles of the present day. Since June 2004, the collection has held exhibitions under the same roof as the Helmut Newton Foundation at the Museum of Photography opposite the Zoologischer Garten station. After a complete restoration of the Kaisersaal, the Art Library Photographic Collection now has its own exhibition space. Selections of works from the library's many other collections are regularly presented in special exhibitions. The neighboring Kupferstichkabinett Berlin (Museum of Prints and Drawings) concentrates primarily on fine art drawings and prints. The Art Library does not circulate, but its collections can be viewed upon request in the Art Library's study room.

The collections

The Art Library acquires and researches scientific literature on the history of European art from late antiquity to the present. The collection also includes: *1,400 current international periodicals *Architectural drawings *Drawings and prints in the field of

Applied arts The applied arts are all the arts that apply design and decoration to everyday and essentially practical objects in order to make them aesthetically pleasing."Applied art" in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Art''. Online edition. Oxford Univ ...

*The Lipperheide Costume Library *Posters and advertisements *Graphic and Book design collections *Photographic Collection **Historic photographs archive, **Collection of artistic photography **Personal bequests archive **Photogrammetric holdings **Historical postcards from the 19th and 20th century.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Libraries in Berlin Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Visual arts libraries Libraries established in 1972