Art and Art History

The Department of Special Collections is located on the lower level of the Young Research Library, at the foot of the central staircase. The department's photographic collections are extensive and include the works of many of the most celebrated practitioners of the art, such as Ansel Adams, Julia Margaret Cameron, Eadweard Muybridge, William Henry Fox Talbot, Carleton Watkins, and Edward Weston. The department also houses extensive holdings of artists' books. A guide to art-related holdings can be found here.

The special collections consist of rare and unique materials from the 15th century to the present: nearly 50,000 rare books, more than 27,000 single prints and drawings in albums and collections, 800 collections of rare photographs, and more than 12,000 linear feet of manuscripts and archives, as well as optical devices and 20th-century multiples and videos. These diverse resources have been acquired for their research value to art historians and scholars in related fields.

The Archives today is the world’s pre-eminent and most widely used research center dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America.

The Museum of Modern Art Archives is an internationally recognized research center for modern and contemporary art. The Archives collects, preserves, and makes accessible nearly 90 years’ worth of the Museum’s historical records, 40 years’ worth of MoMA PS1 records, and other primary source documents concerning art and cultural history in the 20th and 21st centuries, including private archives and papers of artists, galleries, dealers, art historians, critics, and others.