
A print room is a room in an
art gallery
An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...
or
museum
A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...
where a collection of
and modern prints, usually together with
drawing
Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...
s,
watercolour
Watercolor (American English) or watercolour ( Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting method"Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to the ...
s, and
photograph
A photograph (also known as a photo, or more generically referred to as an ''image'' or ''picture'') is an image created by light falling on a photosensitivity, photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor. Th ...
s, are held and viewed.
A further meaning is a room decorated by pasting prints onto the wall in a quasi-
collage
Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...
style to form a sort of
wallpaper
Wallpaper is used in interior decoration to cover the interior walls of domestic and public buildings. It is usually sold in rolls and is applied onto a wall using wallpaper paste. Wallpapers can come plain as "lining paper" to help cover uneve ...
, an 18th-century fashion, of which several examples survive. One of the largest, though atypically the prints are cut out round shapes, that are pasted well spaced apart, is at
The Vyne,
Basingstoke
Basingstoke ( ) is a town in Hampshire, situated in south-central England across a valley at the source of the River Loddon on the western edge of the North Downs. It is the largest settlement in Hampshire without city status in the United King ...
,
Hampshire
Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...
.
Appearance
For conservation reasons, works on paper cannot be permanently displayed, as light, temperature, and humidity conditions leave them vulnerable to damage, normally limiting an open display to no more than 6 months. They are kept in inert, acid-free boxes, albums, or portfolios behind closed doors; which considerations of space would dictate in any case for the vast majority. Where possible, they are mounted on archivally safe supports, but large collections still contain less important items loose in boxes. Storage may be in the same room as the viewing is done (the 'Reading-' or 'Study Room'), but as the largest collections have well over a million items stores are often located 'behind the scenes', along with the
curator
A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...
s' offices. Typically, a large print room appears like a library reading room, and the visitor sits at a desk equipped with a stand or easel, fills in a request slip, and the material requested is brought out for them by curatorial staff, who are able to offer further information about works and artists. Visitors are often able to compare a selection of works by different artists, aiding connoisseurial study.
Visiting

Most national collections can be seen by the public more easily than is often realised. Usually, visitors of all sorts, whether researchers or not, are entitled to view works on paper not on display in the galleries, which will form the great majority of an institution's collection, thereby making print rooms an essential resource for enabling our understanding and appreciation of works on paper – in particular, how artists conceive of finished paintings through preparatory studies, and how printmaking traditions and techniques have evolved over the centuries. On a national level, print rooms tend to differ, each having their own specialism, though collections often overlap in content.
There are links to lists of print rooms at the end of this article; most lead to the gallery's or museum's web-pages, which explain visiting arrangements. In many cases, appointments need to be made in advance, and proof of identity should usually be provided. While it is helpful to outline what you would like to see (including artists' names and catalogue numbers, which may be available online or in books), visitors are also usually welcome to discuss their needs more casually by phoning or emailing in advance of their appointment. Not all material will be available to view, depending on current loans and exhibitions commitments and the condition of works. Some especially fragile or valuable items may not normally be available for viewing.
Within the print room, setting rules and regulations will vary from institution to institution. Some print rooms may allow visitors to photograph works (without a flash), while others may permit sketching. The V&A's Prints and Drawings Study Room allows photography but Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms do not, though Tate visitors are allowed to sketch and paint in watercolour with appropriate precautions.
Print Rooms need not be 'passive' spaces – though they are places for study (perhaps suggestive of quiet contemplation), they are also geared towards fostering creative engagement in diverse audiences. Several internationally renowned print rooms lead or contribute to a range of public educational programmes, including talks, tours, and study days for groups. In particular, university print rooms, including those of the
Yale University Art Gallery, are regularly set aside for art-historical lectures.
Often not in the expected museum

Because of the historical development of museums, and also funding, prints, and drawings are sometimes associated with
library
A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...
collections rather than collections of paintings. For example, in Paris, the main print (but not drawings) collection is in the
Bibliotheque Nationale de France, not the
Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...
. In New York and Washington, both the main art museums (
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
and
National Gallery of Art Washington) and the libraries (
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...
and
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
) all have important, though very different, collections. Sometimes, material from non-Western traditions – in particular, Asian material, including Japanese prints – may or may not be held in the same department, or the same institution.
In the US public libraries are officially more accessible than art museum print rooms, which are often privately funded and only open to academic researchers. But most public libraries with prints and drawings collections tend to house these in discrete rooms, where they are tended to by specialist works on paper curators (see, for example, the Art and Architecture Room and Prints and Photographs Room of
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...
).
In the UK national collections of art on paper are, in the main, publicly funded and thus widely accessible in gallery and museum print rooms; they rarely form part of library holdings. The UK's main collection of Western prints and drawings is held in the
British Museum
The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...
and includes fine examples by the Old Masters. The
National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...
holds no works on paper; only paintings and sculptures of the European tradition. Originally known as the national gallery of British art,
Tate Britain
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in En ...
holds British prints and drawings, which include the world's largest collection of watercolours, sketches and engravings by JMW Turner, historic works on paper from the late 18th and 19th centuries, and modern and contemporary British and International prints. The
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...
's works on the paper collection have a particularly broad remit, encompassing works of fine and applied art (including posters) as well as ephemera.
When the British Museum's main collection and library collection separated in 1997, evinced by the establishment of the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...
(on separate premises in St Pancras), art on paper remained within the British Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings,
with, for example, the exception of the library's East India Company collection which largely comprises maps and topographical drawings, now held within the Asia, Pacific and Africa Department of the British Library. Because of a decision in the late 19th century, where the bulk of the collection of topographical prints was classed with maps and put under the British Museum Library rather than the Prints and Drawings Department, these are now also in the British Library. The decision reflected the traditional view going back to the Renaissance that
fine art
In European academic traditions, fine art (or, fine arts) is made primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from popular art, decorative art or applied art, which also either serve some practical function (such as ...
required the use of the imagination, and that mere illustration of real scenes (often in practice considerably rearranged by the artist) did not qualify.
When, conversely, the Victoria and Albert Museum united its art and library collections, with the establishment of the Word and Image division, the Prints and Drawings Study Rooms and the National Art Library remained discrete entities, each with their own specialist staff (with different areas of academic and professional training) and facilities and services catered to the public's and collections' needs.
One of the relatively few print rooms to exist as a separate institution (rather than as part of a larger museum or library), the
Albertina (Vienna) is by general consent, the world's greatest collection of Western art on paper. The
Berlin Kupferstichkabinett at
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 ...
is, similarly, a major museum with an exclusive focus on prints and drawings. Though housed in the same building as the main paintings collection, the
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
The (, Painting Gallery) is an art museum in Berlin, Germany, and the museum where the main selection of paintings belonging to the Berlin State Museums (''Staatliche Museen zu Berlin'') is displayed. It was first opened in 1830, and the cur ...
, it has separate direction and administration. (The
list of museums with major collections of European prints and drawings has some very incomplete figures on the holdings of major collections.)
References
{{reflist
External links
Delineavit et Sculpsit— the major print rooms of the world
— a long list of print rooms in the USA & Canada only. Numbers given refer to
contemporary art
Contemporary art is a term used to describe the art of today, generally referring to art produced from the 1970s onwards. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a ...
prints only; most collections have other works as well.
Bodkin Prints— a virtual print-room. Links to well over 10,000 online images of prints.
Print rooms open to the general public
*
ttp://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/601/view Princeton University Art Museum Prints and Drawings Collection study roomPrint Collection at the New York Public LibraryMorse Study Room Boston Museum of Fine Arts(including Object Study Classroom)
*
ttp://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/pd/pdhome.html British Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings, LondonTate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms, London*
ttp://www.bl.uk/reshelp/inrrooms/stp/rrbysubj/aasrr/print/printroom.html British Library's Print Room, St Pancras, London
Prints and Drawings Rooms, Courtauld Institute of Art, LondonThe Fitzwilliam's Graham Robertson study room, CambridgeAshmolean print room, OxfordBirmingham Museum and Art Gallery print roomPrints and Drawings Study Room, National Museum CardiffNational Gallery of Scotland print room, EdinburghScottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA) print room, EdinburghHunterian Art Gallery print room, University of Glasgow"Prints, drawings and portraits"at the
Print Room
A print room is a room in an art gallery or museum where a collection of old master print, old master and modern prints, usually together with drawings, watercolours, and photographs, are held and viewed.
A further meaning is a room decorated ...
,
Leiden University Library
Leiden University Libraries is the set of libraries of Leiden University, founded in 1575 in Leiden, Netherlands.
A later edition entitled ''The bastion of liberty : a history of Leiden University'', was published in 2018. Full-text at archive ...
, The Netherlands
The study room at Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Print rooms with restricted access
Albertina collection, ViennaPrint Study Rooms, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC*
ttp://www.metmuseum.org/education/er_lib.asp#stu Prints and Drawings Study Rooms, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York"Buckingham Palace Summer Opening"at the
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection of the British royal family is the largest private art collection in the world.
Spread among 13 occupied and historic List of British royal residences, royal residences in the United Kingdom, the collection is owned by King ...
print room, Windsor, Surrey
See also
Exhibition of Renaissance drawings at the British Museum, with reference to the Prints and Drawings study roomInternational Fine Print Dealers AssociationPrint Council of America
Printmaking
Rooms
Types of art museums and galleries
it:Kupferstichkabinett