The Berlin Art Library (german: Kunstbibliothek Berlin) is an agency of the

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

under the auspices of the

Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (german: Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz; 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 ...

. 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 aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...

. The library is located on the

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

in Berlin-Tiergarten,

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

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 The ''Neues Sehen'', also known as New Vision or ''Neue Optik'', was a movement, not specifically restricted to photography, which was developed in the 1920s. The movement was directly related to the principles of the Bauhaus. ''Neues Sehen'' con ...

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 Helmut is a German name. Variants include Hellmut, Helmuth, and Hellmuth. From old German, the first element deriving from either ''heil'' ("healthy") or ''hiltja'' ("battle"), and the second from ''muot'' ("spirit, mind, mood"). Helmut may refer ...

at the Museum of Photography opposite the

Zoologischer Garten A zoo (short for zoological garden; also called an animal park or menagerie) is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for conservation purposes. The term ''zoological garden'' refers to zoo ...

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 The Kupferstichkabinett, or Museum of Prints and Drawings, is a prints museum in Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Berlin State Museums, and is located in the Kulturforum on Potsdamer Platz. It is the largest museum of graphic art in Germany, ...

(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

Kunstbibliothek - Berlin State Museums
{{Authority control Libraries in Berlin Berlin State Museums Visual arts libraries