Research Library & Archives

Museums are not just places for looking at art. Curators, educators and others also conduct research on the museum collection, write papers and develop themes for exhibitions and catalogues.

A DIA employee pages through a book in the Research Library

The DIA's Research Library & Archives is critical to serving the scholarly activities of the museum. The collection contains more than 191,000 volumes, 300 periodical titles and 5,000 cubic feet of archival material in a variety of formats. Resources include DIA publications, auction catalogues, catalogues raisonnĂ©s, national and international museum publications, artist monographs, and finding aids to our archival collections. Foreign publications make up a substantial part of our collection.

Our Research Library & Archives is a member of the DALNET (Detroit Area Library Network) consortium of libraries comprised of special, academic, and public libraries and other information providers. Thanks to a DALNET grant, we were able to digitize and create virtual access to earlier Detroit Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts' Bulletins and Annual Reports (1891-1960) and exhibition catalogues (1886-1923) .

Please visit Rights and Reproduction to request permission to use images of works in our collection.

Browse The Online Catalog