Berlin Art Library

(Local Name: Kunstbibliothek) The Berlin Art Library, founded in 1867, developed out of the Craft Museum of the Berlin Craft Workers' Union (Handwerkverein). Today, with its museum of architecture, fashion and graphic design, it is one of the State museums of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. It also incorporates an art library with some 180,000 volumes, a costume library with its own reading room (displaying dress and costumes in 18,000 volumes and 65,000 prints), a display cabinet for applied art, with a collection of architectural materials from Gothic to modern (100 models of buildings, 25,000 sketches, 40,000 prints and engravings), collections of commercial art with 48,000 posters and about 100,000 prints, the Grisebach Collection (2,000 volumes and 5,000 individual sheets on European books and calligraphy from the 15th to the 18th C.), and a collection of illustrated magazines and newspapers from the 19th and 20th C. Access to the stored collections of architectural drawings, commercial art and posters is by prior arrangement only. The adjoining picture archives contain 250,000 photos (mainly architectural) and more than 25,000 slides. When the new museum building is completed the library will move there.