Subject Guides: Art & Art History: Books

Finding Books in the Lee Library & in Other Libraries

ScholarSearch
Find books, exhibition catalogs, journals, articles, and other electronic materials.
Other Libraries: Worldcat
Find books in other libraries. You can find out if other libraries have additional materials on your topic, then order them through our Interlibrary Loan Services. Worldcat is a national consortia of libraries.

Subject Headings for Art Books

Art books are cataloged according to the following subject patterns:

MEDIUM | ex: painting, sculpture, installation

NATIONALITY | ex: art, French; painting, American

GENRE | ex: landscape painting; portrait painting

TIME PERIOD | ex: art, modern--21st century; painting, French--19th century

STYLE/MOVEMENT | ex: baroque; impressionism (art)

Museum and Exhibition Catalogs

Exhibition Catalogs have subject headings for the name of the artist featured in an exhibition and name of the museum or gallery. To find exhibition catalogs, use the keyword "exhibitions" and the artist's name. Ex: Matisse AND exhibitions

Museum Catalogs are catalogs of a museum's permanent collection, and are cataloged by the name of the museum and the subdivision "catalogs" in the subject. To find museum catalogs, use the keyword "catalogs" and the name of the museum. Ex: Metropolitan Museum of Art AND catalogs

Catalogues Raisonnés

A catalogue raisonné is a comprehensive compilation of an artist's body of works, usually containing descriptions, provenance, exhibition history, etc.

To find an artist's catalogue raisonné in the Lee Library, search the artist's name and the term "catalogues raisonnés"
Ex: Van Gogh AND catalogues raisonnés

Check the current list of catalogues raisonnés in the Lee Library.

IFAR | Catalogue Raisonné Database
International Foundation for Art Research offers 2 databases: published catalogues raisonnés and catalogues in preparation.

Additional Sources for Digitized Art Books

Getty Research Portal
Contains 170,000 digitized volumes from nearly 40 contributing institutions around the world. Free and open access to the digitized literature of art history.

HathiTrust This link opens in a new window The Hathi Trust Digital Library brings together the immense collections of partner institutions in digital form, preserving them securely to be accessed and used today, and in future generations. Check the Full view only box when searching to limit your results to freely accessible materials.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research. By logging into Google Scholar from off-campus, the library holdings will be integrated into your search results allowing you to quickly find the full-text of scholarly materials.

Google Book Search Google Book Search searches a growing "database" of digitized books with access to Full Text View, Sample Page View, and Snippet Views, depending on the title.
Internet Archive Vast collection of digitized books including art and design books, exhibition catalogs, and museum publications. Popular and academic books from American and Canadian Libraries, Community Texts, Project Gutenberg, etc.
The Getty Virtual Library
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Over 300 titles published by the Getty Museum, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Research Institute. Publications date back to 1966 and include collection catalogues, translations of groundbreaking texts on the visual arts, essential works of art historical research, exhibition catalogues, journals, etc. The titles are fully searchable and most of them are accompanied by a description, a table of contents, and author biographies.

Browsing Call Numbers

level 5 | FLOOR MAP

N visual arts in general
NA architecture
NB sculpture
NC drawing, design, illustration
ND painting
NE prints
NK design, decorative arts
NX visual and performing arts
TR photography
TS industrial design (level 2)
Z 40-286 typography

Bibliography Maker

Create and format your own bibliography of articles, books, etc. Import references from databases and use the style guide of your choice! Step-by-Step Guide