Bapst Library

The art and architecture collection, housed in the Bapst Library, supports the study, teaching, and research needs of faculty and students in Art, Art History, and Film and other disciplines, as well as the cultural needs of the university community in general.  The collection covers the areas of the history of art and architecture from prehistoric times to the present along with museum studies, and photography.  Many of these areas overlap with other academic departments, namely Theatre, English, Philosophy, Theology, Psychology and Neuroscience, History, Romance Languages and Literatures, Eastern, Slavic, and German Studies, Classical Studies, Irish Studies, Communication, and the Lynch School of Education and Human Development.

The collection includes both monographs and serials to support the study of fine arts on the advanced undergraduate level. Historically, special areas of emphasis within the collection were Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art & Architecture, America in the 19th and 20th centuries, Expressionism, Irish Art, Islamic Art, ecclesiastical art & architecture, and photography.  We continue developing those areas and are also actively collecting in Asian, African, Caribbean, Latin American, and other world art. 

The collection also supports the curatorial work of the McMullen Museum of Art, which is located at 2101 Commonwealth Avenue, and is under the auspices of the Art, Art History, and Film department.

The collection consists of monographs, reference works, serials, catalogues raisonnés, exhibition catalogues, and indexes. Each year, more materials become available in electronic format. Textbooks and "how to" books are generally not collected. In the area of architecture, the emphasis is the history of architecture and the works of individual architects as opposed to architectural techniques. The same holds true for photography, as very little is collected in the area of darkroom or photographic techniques. Historical treatments and general surveys in the area of decorative arts are included.

English is the primary language of the collection, followed by works in French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Dutch.

Emphasis is on currently published materials.  Retrospective acquisition is carried out to support new course offerings and to fill in the holdings of major serials; it will involve reprints or microforms if and only if original materials are no longer available.