Libraries and Archives

Two libraries together comprise one of the largest and oldest art museum libraries in the country. The Art Reference Library parallels the Museum’s collection. There are materials on art, anthropology, archaeology, ethnology, iconography, and religion that support research on our objects and the cultures they represent, from antiquity to contemporary times. There are also seminal journals, particularly from second-wave feminism, as well as artists’ files with obscure, ephemeral documentation that is difficult to find elsewhere.

The Wilbour Library of Egyptology is one of the world’s most comprehensive research libraries for the study of ancient Egypt. It is named for Charles Edwin Wilbour, one of America’s first Egyptologists, whose family donated his personal library to the Museum in 1916 along with his papers and collection of antiquities. This library directly supports the research and interpretation of our exemplary collection of Egyptian art. It also includes materials on the ancient Near East and Classical World.

Special Collections holdings represent both libraries and include rare books and manuscripts; visual material documenting Brooklyn in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including trade cards, postcards, and photographs; and a collection of almost 40,000 original fashion sketches from famous designers of the early and mid-20th century. There is also the artists’ book collection, containing almost 3,000 publications from the last century and representing many collection and Brooklyn-based artists.

The Archives contain more than 50 collections documenting the history of the Museum since its founding. These collections include institutional records, curatorial correspondence, expedition reports, photographs, lantern slides, scrapbooks, and ephemera that represent all Museum departments, exhibitions, and activities.

All provenance research for collection objects starts with materials in the Archives. These materials facilitate tracking an object’s history of ownership and arrival at the Museum, and help produce new scholarship. Over 30 expedition reports compiled by one of the Museum’s earliest curators, Stewart Culin, document many of the earliest acquisitions and are particularly vital for Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) efforts.