Watson Library Collection
Overview
With more than one million volumes and extensive online resources, Watson Library is one of the world’s most comprehensive art libraries. The library’s holdings reflect the global and encyclopedic nature of The Met, with books ranging in date from the late 15th century to current scholarship, in over 100 languages on art and visual culture around the world.
The collection includes:
- More than 250,000 exhibition catalogues
- Over 21,000 periodical titles
- Rare publications and special collections
- One of the world’s most extensive collections of art auction and sales catalogues, with more than 140,000 volumes dating from the mid-18th century to the present day
- A wide range of electronic resources (including numerous indexes, e-books, online journals, and databases)
Library Dashboard
This interactive dashboard highlights the many facets of the library’s services and collection. The first page provides the most up-to-date statistics for the current fiscal year to date. The following pages summarize the previous fiscal years and illustrate changes in the library’s activities and collection over time.
Collection Development Policy
The Metropolitan Museum of Art libraries have created the collection development policy (PDF) as a planning guide for developing each library’s collection, and to clarify the selection criteria used to build and maintain that collection.
Over 1.1 million pages of content, from across the Met and partner institutions, are freely accessible online through Watson Library's Digital Collections. Museum publications, dealer archives, manuscripts, sound recordings, trade and exhibition catalogues, images, decorated bindings, and more are represented.
Watson Library and the Museum’s several specialized libraries possess extensive rare and important titles that are notable for both their historical importance and their scholarly value.
Manuscript Items
The more than 5,000 manuscript items in the collection include Samuel Putnam Avery’s European travel diary, approximately 1,400 autograph letters to and from Sir Richard Westmacott, and numerous other autograph letters and papers relating to prominent artists. All manuscripts in Watson have been digitized and are available online.
Rare Book Collection
Gifts from J. Pierpont Morgan, Samuel Putnam Avery, and other founders and early Trustees of the Museum established the foundation of the library’s rare book collection. Generous donors provided funding for this collection of treatises on art and architecture, early travel books, archaeological studies, rare collection catalogues, artists’ manuals and handbooks, and complete runs of seminal journals.
Artists’ Publications
This collection, international in scope, includes more than 7,000 artists’ books, zines, bookworks, artist magazines, pamphlets, artists’ files, reference books, dealer catalogs, pricelists, journals, and all forms of artists’ publishing. At the foundation of this collection are The Robert J. Ruben and Yvonne Korshak Ruben Collection and The Liliana Dematteis Collection.
Avant-Garde, Modern, and Contemporary Movements of the 20th Century
With support from the Friends of Watson Library, the library identifies and acquires core books, periodicals, exhibition catalogues, and other primary source materials to expand awareness, interpretation, appreciation, and new narratives that acknowledge a more global history of 20th century modernism and avant-garde art movements.
Book Arts and Paper Arts
Watson Library’s collection on the history of papermaking and decorated paper comprises hundreds of paper specimen books, along with monographs, exhibition catalogues, and periodicals on bookbinding, decorated paper, and papermaking. The holdings also include the Paper Legacy Collection, featuring the work of more than 50 American decorated paper artists active from the 1960s through the 2000s, with extensive paper samples, publications, tools, recipe books, and personal correspondence. Recent library exhibitions have featured book and paper art objects, including Decorated Paper: A Selection of Publications in Watson Library (2023) and The Magic of Marbling: The Art of Karli Frigge (2025).
