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The Worcester Art Museum Library


Hours & Information  

Labor Day to Memorial Day
Wednesday-Friday, 11am-5pm
Saturday, 10am-5pm
Memorial Day to Labor Day
Wednesday-Friday, 11am-5pm Closed the Saturdays before and after Christmas

Phone: 508.799.4406, x3070
E-mail at library@worcesterart.org

Free Admission

History

The Worcester Art Museum Library, founded in 1909, is a bibliographic resource dedicated to the history of art reflecting the collection strengths of the Museum. The Library is managed in association with the College of the Holy Cross, a collaboration that began in 2001.


The Library is located on the second floor of the Museum. The reading room is the original Sculpture Gallery in the Museum's 1898 building and houses frequently used monographs and art publications.

Using the Library

The Library serves the staff of the Museum, and also extends its resources and services to the community, including teachers, students, faculty, collectors, museum docents, scholars, and the general public. For Worcester area college students the Museum is a stop on the Consortium's shuttle service.

A photocopier is available ($.15 per page black and white, $.50 per page color) and a printer is attached to our public access computer terminals.

Online Catalog

The Library's online catalog provides access to most of the holdings of the Worcester Art Museum Library and the libraries of the College of the Holy Cross, as well as a database of 1700 images from the Museum's permanent collection.

Holdings

The Library's bibliographic collection encompasses all periods and media of art, with an emphasis on European, American, and Asian art. The collection includes:

The collection is non-circulating.

Friends of the Library

The Friends of the Library group was started in 2002 to support and enhance the Library's activities and collections. Its purposes are: to provide and attract new financial support to enrich the basic collections and activities of the Library; to provide and attract special collections, rare books, and manuscripts; to sponsor special projects or programs; to provide a thorough understanding of the Library and its role in the Museum's future; and to serve as a medium through which persons may advance their own intellectual pursuits and share their enthusiasm for books and art.

The group meets four times a year and enjoys behind-the-scenes programs and special speakers. The group sponsors the triennial art book sale which is the Library's major fund raiser.

New Friends of the Library members are always welcome! If interested, please email library@worcesterart.org.

Membership Levels
Friend   $50
Associate   $100
Supporter   $250
Partner   $500
Benefactor   $1000 and up

Friends of the Library Book Club

The Friends of the Library also sponsors a unique book club that meets five times per year to discuss books related to art, with specific themes related to the Worcester Art Museum. The book club usually has a guest speaker and includes a trip to the galleries.

2010-2011 Friends of the Library Book Club Selections
All meetings start at 6pm in the Museum Library.

September 16, 2010
The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History
Robert M. Edsel, 304pgs
With special guest, Jim Welu, Director, Worcester Art Museum

WWII was the most destructive war in history and caused the greatest dislocation of cultural artifacts. Hundreds of thousands of items remain missing. The main burden fell to a few hundred men and women, curators and archivists, artists and art historians from 13 nations. Their task was to save and preserve what they could of Europe's great art, and they were called the Monuments Men. (Coincidentally or not, this book appears only briefly after Ilaria Dagnini Brey's The Venus Fixers: The Untold Story of the Allied Soldiers Who Saved Italy's Art During World War II, Reviews, June 1.)

Edsel has presented their achievements in documentaries and photographs. He and Witter (coauthor of the bestselling Dewey) are no less successful here. Focusing on the organization's role in northwest Europe, they describe the Monuments Men from their initial mission to limit combat damage to structures and artifacts to their changed focus of locating missing items. Most had been stolen by the Nazis. In southern Germany alone, over a thousand caches emerged, containing everything from church bells to insect collections. The story is both engaging and inspiring. In the midst of a total war, armies systematically sought to mitigate cultural loss.

November 18, 2010
Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa
R.A. Scotti, 256pgs
Guest to be determined.

The sensational disappearing act captured the world's imagination. Crowds stood in line to view the empty space on the museum wall. Thousands more waited, as concerned as if Mona Lisa were a missing person, for news of the lost painting. Almost a century later, questions still linger: Who really pinched Mona Lisa, and why? Part love story, part mystery, Vanished Smile reopens the puzzling case that transformed a Renaissance portrait into the most enduring icon of all time.
(Reviews: reads like a crime novel)

January 20, 2011
Spiral Jetta
Erin Hogan, 192pgs With special guest, Susan L. Stoops, Curator of Contemporary Art, Worcester Art Museum

Hogan, director of public affairs at the Art Institute of Chicago and a recovering art historian with decidedly urban sensibilities, set out on a road trip to visit the most significant works of land art in the American West and to make an experimental assault on her fear of solitude. Hogan's journey in her Volkswagen Jetta began with Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty by the Great Salt Lake; in eight more chapters she documents her visits to Michael Heizer's Double Negative in Nevada, Walter De Maria's Lightning Field in New Mexico, failed attempts to find Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels and James Turrell's Roden Crater, along with stops in Moab, Utah; Juárez, Mexico; and Marfa, Texas, the contemporary art pilgrim's mecca. Hogan's pilgrimage, sparsely illustrated, is part well-informed art historical travelogue and part light foray into self-discovery; her prose is lucid, energetic and expressive, and she is an affable guide. But this narrative does not convincingly convey the depth of her interior journey or the aesthetic insight that Hogan sought to experience.

March 17, 2011
Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock
Henry Adams, 416pgs
Guest to be determined.

Adams, author of Eakins Revisited (2005), practices art history with a novelist's narrative skills and psychological acuity, a sleuth's instincts, a passion for aesthetic and technical explications, and a gift for sea change interpretations. In this utterly absorbing, carefully reasoned inquiry into the profound relationship between two painters, one reviled, the other worshiped, Adams reclaims the wrongfully maligned Thomas Hart Benton and recalibrates our perception of Jackson Pollock and his masterpieces. Benton hid his true cultured self behind the mask of a “semi-literate hillbilly,” just as his “technical virtuosity” is concealed within his controversial murals. An exemplary teacher as well as a trailblazing artist, Benton was mentor and father figure to Pollock. “It is no exaggeration,” writes Adams, “to say that Benton created Pollock as an artist.” Adams cracks the secret of Benton's “rhythmic flow” approach to composition, tracing its roots to the forgotten synchromism movement and its colorful creators. Adams then offers arresting insights into Pollock's life and work, from his utter dependence on Benton and problematic adoration for Benton's wife to the harrowing consequences of his bipolar disorder and his complex inspirations, from Jungian analysis to Asian mysticism. Encompassing a stunning discovery by his art-historian wife, Adams' commanding, corrective double portrait reveals myriad camouflaged truths.

May 19, 2011
Yoshiwara: Geishas, Courtesans, and the Pleasure Quarters of Old Tokyo
Stephen Longstreet, 224pgs
With special guests Louise Virgin, Curator of Asian Art, and Susannah Baker, Curatorial Assistant, both of the Worcester Art Museum The evening will include a trip to the print room to view outstanding examples of prints from the Yoshiwara.

For centuries, Yoshiwara was the famed pleasure center of Tokyo. An erotic world unmatched by the West was created by beautiful courtesans, geishas, dancers, actors and artists. To this “floating world” came the hedonists and the sensual pleasure hunters of old Japan. A hotbed of art and creativity, it also saw the enslavement of countless women, sold or driven into the sex trade.

Yoshiwara traces the rise and fall of this city within a city, a sanctioned preserve of teahouses and brothels that was not abolished until 1958, sketching a vivid portrait of social and sexual mores in Japan's capital.

Donations

The Library welcomes both monetary donations and books that could be included in the Library's holdings. The Library accepts books that are in good condition and art related. You may also help the Library by donating a book from our wish list.

Bridges to Art

Bridges to Art is a privately-funded, collaborative project between the College of the Holy Cross and the Worcester Art Museum. Digital and library information technologies are being employed to deliver art images and educational resources to a wider audience on the Internet. An exciting model of museum-library cooperation, Bridges to Art stimulates and enriches teaching, learning, and research.

Library Brochure

Download the Library Brochure for more information on the library.