UCLA Special Collections
The Special Collection Department in the Young Research Library houses several important Los Angeles and Southern California art archives, including, but not limited to:
Consult the following links for additional information about UCLA Special Collections:
- UCLA Library Digital Collections This link opens in a new windowRare and unique digital materials developed by the UCLA Library to support education, research, service, and creative expression, including the AIDS Poster Collection, the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive and more.
Libraries, Archives, and Special Collections
- Library at the Getty Research InstituteThe Research Library at the Getty Research Institute focuses on the history of art, architecture, and archaeology with relevant materials in the humanities and social sciences. The range of the collections begins with prehistory and extends to contemporary art.
- Getty Research Institute: Special CollectionsThe 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.
- Balch Art Research LibraryIn keeping with LACMA’s commitment to research and education, the Mr. and Mrs. Allan C. Balch Art Research Library maintains an extensive, non-circulating collection of research-level materials that support the museum’s collections and programming. The library holds over 200,000 monographs, exhibition catalogs, journals, periodicals, reference resources, and current auction catalogs, as well as a growing collection of art ephemera files.
- Los Angeles Contemporary ArchiveLos Angeles Contemporary Archive is an artist-run physical and digital living archive and non-circulating library in which contemporary creative processes are recorded, preserved, and made available to the general public. The collection includes artist books, studio and performance ephemera, audiovisual recordings, and digital media files.
- The Archives of the Los Angeles County Museum of ArtThe Archives of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art are the repository for LACMA’s institutional records of enduring value; collecting preserving and making them available through the Balch Art Research Library. The Archives also includes a select number of collections relating artists and others who have made important contributions to the Museum.
- ONE National Gay & Lesbian ArchivesONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries is the largest repository of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) materials in the world. Founded in 1952, ONE Archives currently houses over two million archival items including periodicals, books, film, video and audio recordings, photographs, artworks, organizational records, and personal papers.
Print Collections
- UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic ArtsThe collection of the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts comprises more than 45,000 prints, drawings, photographs, and artists' books dating from the Renaissance to the present.
- Center for the Study of Political GraphicsThis educational research archive contains more than 90,000 protest graphics, from the 19th Century to the present—including the largest collection of post-World War II posters in the United States.
- Graphic Arts Collection at the Margaret Herrick LibraryThe poster collection includes more than 42,000 items representing the cinema from some of its earliest attractions to current theatrical releases, and consists primarily of one-sheet posters from Hollywood films as well as examples from independent and foreign productions. Production art materials document more than eighty years of motion picture design.
UCLA Oral Histories
Following are a selection of oral histories relevant to art and art history from Los Angeles and Southern California.
Visit the Art page at the UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research website for a full list of art-related oral histories, many of which are also related to Los Angeles and Southern California.
- Pasadena Art Museum oral history transcripts byDate: c1987–1988
General Archival Research
- Archives of American Art, Smithsonian InstitutionThe 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 ArchivesThe 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.
- Online Archive of California (OAC) This link opens in a new windowFinding aids for primary source collections in all UC campuses and other contributing institutions, including libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California.
- ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new window
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Searches finding aids for historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in libraries, museums, and archives around the world. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies. - WorldCat (OCLC FirstSearch) This link opens in a new window
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OCLC FirstSearch catalog includes citations for books, journals, manuscripts, maps, music scores, sound recordings, films, computer files, newspapers, slides, videotapes, archival material, etc., in libraries around the world.
