Art – Research – Library: Shaping Maps of Knowledge

Soon after art history was established as an academic discipline in its own right in the later nineteenth century, the first art libraries were founded to support both education and research. Focusing on libraries outside of a university or museum context, this paper shows how research methods and library concepts converged and diverged. The years after 1900 and prior to World War I, were particularly rich in terms of disputes over the principles of library organization, shelf ordering systems, and appropriate classification for art literature. Furthermore, Aby Warburg contemporaneously conceived his individual library concept based on the insight that ordering literature – in a highly unconventional manner – and gaining knowledge are closely interrelated. All in all, art history and art libraries were subjected to the same dynamics of conceptual development in these decades, in contrast to later times. The question of whether and how modern data technology correlates with the old models of ordering knowledge is briefly discussed at the end.