Research Guides: Art: Books

Find Books

Search the 'Books & More' tab on the library website using keywords in the title, author, or subject, or the ISBN.

Ebooks can be accessed through links under the 'Online Access' section of the page.
Physical books are arranged using Library of Congress classification. The New School students can borrow or request materials to pick up at any of our locations:
- University Center Library (63 Fifth Avenue, 6th & 7th Floors): Art, Design, Technology
- List Center Library (6 E. 16th Street, 8th Floor): Humanities and Social Sciences
- Performing Arts Library (55 West 13th Street, 2nd Floor): Music, Dance, Theater

View Access and Borrowing info and renew books (My Account) on the library website. Most books can be borrowed for 16 weeks and renewed twice.

Use Consortium Libraries (NYU, Cooper Union, New York School of Interior Design) with your New School ID card.

Three ways to find related books:

Click on subject headings in the library catalog.
Browse the shelf to find books under the same call number.
Look up books and articles referenced in literature.

Offsite: Request items by clicking on the arrow to the right of the item listing and clicking on "Request Item." You will receive an email when the item is available, 1-2 days.
Interlibrary Loan (ILL): Recommended for books or articles not available through the library catalog. To request, login to your ILL account. See our FAQ for detailed instructions.

METRO: Resource-sharing service for New York City area libraries. Onsite access only (no borrowing privileges).

WorldCat: Search WorldCat, a union catalog of library holdings around the world.

Request a Purchase of any books that you need for your research.

The New School subscribes to several E-book Databases. Full-text searching is possible when searching within individual ebook databases.

Google Books can be used as a tool to search inside books. Locate books using our library catalog.

Ebook Central This link opens in a new window
An exhaustive selection of authoritative, scholarly e-books that combines ebook databases ebrary and EBL into one platform.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to create and maintain a trusted archive of important scholarly journals and to provide access to these journals as widely as possible. Content in JSTOR spans many disciplines, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. Recent articles are generally not available. JSTOR now includes access to the Artstor collection. Artstor is an extensive image resource for educational and scholarly use . Including high-quality images and visual media from top museums, archives, scholars, artists, and contributors around the world.

Call Numbers

Most books on the visual arts are located at the University Center library. Art books are organized according to medium, geography, and country of origin of artists. There are also sections for eras and movements, materials and techniques, and subjects in art (such as portraiture and nudes).

Primary Sections

N (fine arts)
NB (sculpture)
NC (drawing)
ND (painting)
NE (printmaking)
NX (arts)
TR (photography)

Please see the Photography Research Guide for a list of call numbers in that section.

Books on new media art, installation art, and video art are located in various sections and are best located using the library catalog.

General Histories, Textbooks	N5300	ND1130
Ancient (Greek, Roman, Egyptian) Medieval Gothic Renaissance, (Italian) Baroque 17th and 18th Centuries Modern 19th Century	N5310 N5950 N6310 N6370, N6915 N6410 N6410-6425 N6447, N6490 N6450-6465	ND60-139 ND140-189 ND140-189 ND140-189, ND615 ND140-189 ND190-196 ND190-196	NB60 NB90-164 NB170-180 NB190-193 NB190-193 NB190-193 NB197
20th Century	N6490		NB198
Art Movements (19th/20th Century)	N6465, N6494	ND190-196
21st Century	N6496-6498

	Art	Painting	Sculpture
African	N7380		NB1080
Americas African-American American 19th Century American 20th Century Central American and Caribbean Mexican Regional South American	N6501 N6538 N6510 N6512 N6550 N6515 N6600	ND205 ND303 ND255	NB200 NB300s NB300s
American Artists	N6537	ND237	NB237
Asian Chinese Art, Artists Indian Japanese Art, Artists Korean Persian Southeast Asian	N7260 N7340, N7349 N7301 N7350, N7359 N7311	ND1040 ND1001 ND1050 ND1060 ND3241	NB1001 NB1050
Australian, Oceanic Aboriginal	N7400, N7410	ND1101
European Austrian Belgian British Art, Artists Czech Dutch/Flemish Art, Artists French Art, Artists German Art, Artists Italian Art, Artists Russian Art, Artists Scandinavian Artists Spanish Art, Artists Swiss Artists	N6750 N6811 N6761, N6797 N6834 N6925, N6953 N6847, N6853 N6868 N6911, N6923 N6981, N6997,9 N7073 N7101, N7113 N7153	ND450 ND511 ND673 ND461, ND497 ND625, ND653 ND541, ND 553 ND562, ND588 ND611, ND623 ND681 ND707 ND801, ND813	NB463, NB497 NB543, NB553 NB561, NB588 NB611, NB623
Jewish	N7415

General Artists' Manuals	N7340
Drawing Anatomy Perspective Portraits	NC650, NC845 NC760 NC750 NC765
Painting Color Landscapes Portraits Still Life	ND1500 ND1280, ND1488 ND1340 ND1301 ND1390
Sculpture	NB1170
Subjects in Art Nude Portraits Women	N7570-7572 N7575 N7630

Art E-books

There are many new initiatives to digitize historical art books and to offer new publications -- including exhibition catalogs and scholarly monographs -- in digital format. Public domain works can be found by searching the Web.

Art & Architecture ePortal This link opens in a new window
Authoritative eBook resource that features important works of scholarship in the history of art, architecture, decorative arts, material culture, photography, and design. Innovative functionality and extensive metadata offer students and scholars exciting ways to discover and engage with content from Yale University Press and other leading university presses and museum publishers

Getty Publications Virtual Library
Publications include illustrated works on artists and art history, exhibition catalogues, works on cultural history, research on the conservation of materials and archaeological sites, scholarly monographs, critical editions of translated works, comprehensive studies of the Getty's collections, and educational books on art to interest children of all ages. Launched in 2014, Virtual Library has more than 250 titles spanning its forty-year publishing history. Titles are searchable by title, author, and keyword and include full descriptions, tables of contents, links to read online, to purchase the print book, to find in a library, or to download the complete PDF for free for personal use (terms of use).
MetPublications
Five decades of Met publications on art history, available to read, download, and/or search for free.

MIT Press Direct This link opens in a new window
MIT Press covers more than 40 ejournals and 3200 ebooks , with 150 ebooks added annually. Subjects emphasized include cognitive science, digital humanities & new media, economics, environment, information science, neuroscience, philosophy, science/technology & society, and social sciences.

Artists' Books

Special Collections

Most of The New School's artists' books are part of our Special Collections. Visit the Special Collections page for more information about finding and using artists’ books.

University Center Library

A small selection of artists’ books found in The New School’s University Center Library, identified by call number N 7433.4, are not Special Collections. Please see our FAQ for more information about using artists' books.

Library Stack This link opens in a new window
Library Stack is a database and archive of digital arts publications from the fields of contemporary art, graphic design, architecture, film and philosophy.

Library Stack Search Tip

Filter formats to "artists projects" then filter to "artists' books"

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to create and maintain a trusted archive of important scholarly journals and to provide access to these journals as widely as possible. Content in JSTOR spans many disciplines, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. Recent articles are generally not available. JSTOR now includes access to the Artstor collection. Artstor is an extensive image resource for educational and scholarly use . Including high-quality images and visual media from top museums, archives, scholars, artists, and contributors around the world.

JSTOR Search Tips

Use the advanced image search term "artists' books" and change the field to "work type"
Use the advanced image search and leave the search terms blank. Then select the collections:
- Artists' Books and/or
- Artists' Books and Fine Print Book Collections

Digitized artists' books in JSTOR may only include the cover and a limited amount of pages.

Art