HOLLIS ClassicFine Arts Library
Collections Overview
- Overview
- Digital Images & Slides
- East Asian Collections
- Middle East Collections
- Special Visual Collections: East Asia
- Special Visual Collections: Middle East
- Special Visual Collections: Prints and Photographs
- Harvard Film Archive
- Request a Purchase
Overview
Founded in 1895 as a department of the Fogg Art Museum, The Fine Arts Library is among the leading libraries in the world for the study of art, architecture, and visual culture from antiquity to the present. Our collections include extensive textual and visual documentation about individual paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, architecture, and decorative arts; the history of collecting and taste; art museums; and art conservation. In addition to outstanding collections of books, periodicals, exhibition catalogs, pamphlets, and auction catalogs, the Library’s special collections contain over two million photographs, prints, postcards, albums, film stills, posters, rubbings, and drawings. The Harvard Film Archive houses films and film posters. Subject strengths in special collections include visual images relating to the Middle East and the Islamic World, East Asia, Europe, and the Americas that depict people, occupations, politics, everyday life, recreation, sports, religion, travel, celebrations, cities, buildings, sites, monuments, gravestones, warfare and the effects of war on cultural heritage.
While our book and periodical collections are fully represented in the HOLLIS catalog, many of our special collections often appear there only at the collection level. Selected individual images from our visual collections and many of our teaching images may be found in the Visual Information Access (VIA) catalog. Auction sales catalogs are exclusively listed in the SCIPIO database, available through Harvard’s E-Resources.
Materials for the study of art, architecture, archeology, film, and visual studies can also be found in other Harvard libraries. Medieval manuscripts, rare illustrated books, drawings, prints, and photographs are in the collection of Houghton Library. Architecture and design are collected by the Frances Loeb Library of the Harvard Design School. The primary collection of African, Native American, pre-Columbian, Oceanic, and other ethnographic materials is at the Tozzer Library. Film Studies publications and classical archeology materials are primarily found in Widener Library.
