Skip to Main Content
University of Texas University of Texas Libraries

ARH 321 Problems in Art Historical Research

Find Art & Art History Books

Find Books on Art & Art History at UT

The Fine Arts Library and other UT Libraries have thousands and thousands of books on all conceivable topics in their collections. You can perform author and/or title searches in The Library Catalog to find both print and eBooks. You can also search by subject headings and keywords.

 

Ways to Search the Library Catalog

 

Keyword Searching

Use keywords to search for artists, art movements, materials, or your topic. 

Examples:

Ed Ruscha 

Contemporary Art

Photography 

Title 

Use the title of a book you are looking for in a catalog search. 

Example: A Short Guide to Writing about Art

Author

Find a book by a specific author using their last name, first name. 

Example: Barnet, Sylvan

Subject Search

Use the subject search to find books related to your topic. 

Example:

American Art 

Photography


You can also try browsing the stacks in person at the Fine Arts Library. The books are located on the 5th floor and are cataloged by Library of Congress Classification. Try looking in these sections for the books that you need.


Art-General (N)

Architecture (NA)

Sculpture (NB)

Drawing (NC)

Commercial Art (NC 997)

Painting (ND)

Prints, Graphic Arts (NE)     

Decorative Arts (NK)

Design History (NK 1100 - NK 1400)

Furniture (NK 1900 - NK 2750)

Art Theory (NX)

Printing (Z 116 - Z 265)

Photography (TR)

Industrial Design (TS)

Typography/Typesetting (Z 250 - Z251)

Bibliographies can be very useful in collecting a group of information resources on a particular topic,  Resources collected and published as bibliographies have the added benefit of being recommended by an expert in the field, though they may not include the most recent publications.  Library catalogues are good sources for comprehensive searches of the literature.

These are usually multi-volume sets that chronicle the entire output of an artist's career. Extensively researched, they are often considered definitive pieces of scholarship. While not every artist merits a catalogue raisonné, the library has examples for many artists. Catalogues Raisonnés are also often broken down by media, for instance "the complete paintings" or "the complete drawings."  To find catalogues raisonné, search "catalogues raisonne" AND the artists name as a keyword search. 

Find other Art & Art History Books

Interlibrary Loan

If we don't have a title you need, don't hesitate to use our Interlibrary Loan service. It's free for current students, faculty, and staff to request materials from affiliated libraries. Please allow 5+ days for physical materials to arrive and about 24-48 hours for articles. 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Generic License.