The founders of The Metropolitan Museum of Art understood the essential role of the library to the institution's mission. In 1870 the New York State legislature passed a bill that created "a body corporate by the name of 'The Metropolitan Museum of Art,' to be located in the City of New York, for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in said city a Museum and library of art." The library was formally established ten years after this charter was approved, and today the Museum and library share the distinction of being among the world's greatest treasuries for the study of the arts of many cultures. In its scope, Thomas J. Watson Library, the Museum's research library, reflects the encyclopedic permanent collection, with particularly strong holdings in European and American art, including architecture and the decorative arts, as well as substantial holdings in ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Asian, and Islamic art. In addition, several curatorial departments have specialized libraries of their own.

Along with many exhibition, collection, and auction sale catalogues, other books and periodicals, and extensive electronic resources relating to the history of art, Watson Library and the Museum's several specialized libraries possess a number of rare and important titles that are notable for both their historical importance and their scholarly value. Fifty such highlights are presented online, from early printed books to landmark publications of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

More about the Department and Its Collection

Thomas J. Watson Library is the heart of research and scholarly activity at the Metropolitan Museum. The collection has been growing in size and importance for nearly 120 years, and, like the Museum itself, the library has been supported by many donors. Substantial gifts throughout the 1880s from Samuel Putnam Avery, an early trustee, provided the foundation of the library's rare book collection. As part of its manuscript collection, the library also holds Avery's diary relating to his travels in Europe from 1871 to 1882, and numerous letters and sketches sent to him by prominent artists and members of the arts community. During the library's first decade major gifts were also received from, among others, Henry G. Marquand, a president of the Museum, and William Loring Andrews, a trustee, founder of the library, and the Museum's first honorary librarian.

The library continues to benefit from the endowment fund established by the bequest of Jacob S. Rogers in 1901. Income from the fund was to be used for "the purchase of rare and desirable art objects, and in the purchase of books for the library of said Museum." The Rogers Fund has enabled the purchase of tens of thousands of books for the library, both newly published titles and important rare books.

In addition to funding the current library building that bears his name, Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM and a trustee of the Museum from 1951 until 1956, endowed a book purchase fund on which the library relies to purchase a significant number of titles each year. Other important donations from the Watson family have included the endowment of the position of Arthur K. Watson Chief Librarian and the funding of early automation projects by Helen Watson Buckner, the daughter of Thomas J. Watson.

Today, thanks to these benefactors and many others, Watson Library is a magnificent repository of treatises on art and architecture, early travel books, archaeological studies, rare collection catalogues, pioneering works on the history of art, how-to manuals, artists' biographies, complete runs of seminal journals, fencing books, manuscripts, scrapbooks, fine bindings, and examples of fine printing.

The first major building project for the Museum's library was completed by McKim, Mead and White in 1909. By the late 1950s the collection had far exceeded the available space, and in 1963 construction began on the present building, designed to provide storage space for 300,000 volumes. The library opened in its current space in November 1964. Thirty-five years later, the collection has once again exceeded the available shelf and storage capacity. Plans are underway to expand into an area adjacent to the library. This expansion will permit two levels of compact storage totaling 35,000 linear feet—adequate growth space for more than twenty years. The upper level will house a new book conservation center, replacing and modernizing an area now located on the lower level, and a new periodical reading room.

While continuing to develop its strong collection of early printed material, Watson Library is at the forefront in providing current technologies to the more than 20,000 researchers who use the library every year. A major endowed gift from the Lita Annenberg Hazen and Joseph H. Hazen Foundation assured the library's role as a leader in offering access to and training in a wide range of electronic resources. The Lita Annenberg Hazen and Joseph H. Hazen Center for Electronic Information Resources, inaugurated in the fall of 1997, is now the most comprehensive such center in the world devoted to the study of the history of art, and it has served as a model for many other research libraries.

Watsonline, the Museum libraries' online catalogue, lists approximately 70 percent of Watson Library's holdings, including records for all material acquired since 1980, as well as records for partial holdings of the Museum's other libraries. Access to Watsonline and hundreds of general and art-related Internet links catalogued by the Hazen Center is available through this Web site. See Educational Resources for these online resources and information about public access to Watson Library and to the Museum's other libraries: the Uris Library and Teacher Resource Center, The Cloisters Library and Archives, the Robert Goldwater Library (Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas), The Robert Lehman Collection Library, the Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library, the Joyce F. Menschel Photography Library, and the Antonio Ratti Textile Center Reference Library.