Art Through the Pages

This special issue of Museum Studies explores the history and collections of the Art Institute’s Ryerson and Burnham libraries, an integral component of the museum’s educational and scholarly activities from its inception in 1879. Beginning with an introduction on the libraries’ foundation and early decades by their director, Jack Perry Brown, the publication includes over thirty short essays that explore outstanding printed books and journals in the holdings of the Ryerson Library, notable architectural materials in the Burnham Library, and other rare and interesting documents in the museum’s institutional archives. Featuring objects ranging from a fifteenth-century copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle to nineteenth-century lantern slides, from Daniel Burnham’s monumental Plan of Chicago to contemporary artists’ books, this beautifully illustrated issue captures the great—and often surprising—riches of one of the nation’s foremost research facilities for art and architecture.