Download 1,600+ Publications from the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Books, Guides, Magazines & More

Many of us in these past few gen­er­a­tions first heard of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art while read­ing E. L. Konigs­burg’s nov­el From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweil­er. More than a few of us also fan­ta­sized about run­ning away to live in that vast cul­tur­al insti­tu­tion like the book’s young pro­tag­o­nists Clau­dia and Jamie Kin­caid. Yet among oth­er, more prac­ti­cal con­cerns, we might have won­dered where we were going to secure enough read­ing mate­r­i­al to get us through those long after-hours nights. Konigs­burg had Clau­dia and Jamie vis­it the for­mer Don­nell Library Cen­ter, but what about in the Met itself?

What we prob­a­bly did­n’t real­ize in our youth was that, in addi­tion to being a muse­um, the Met is a pub­lish­er. Now, at the Met­Pub­li­ca­tions dig­i­tal archive, we can read a great vari­ety of the books, guides, and peri­od­i­cals it’s put out for more than a century–from a 1911 cat­a­log of the muse­um’s col­lec­tion of pot­tery, porce­lain, and faïence (which refers to pot­tery of the tin-glazed vari­ety) to — as of this writ­ing — the lat­est issue of the Met’s Bul­letin, on Mex­i­can print­mak­ers includ­ing Diego Rivera and José Clemente Oroz­co. They and the more than 1,600 pub­li­ca­tions that lie between them are free for you to explore, some read­able online, and some down­load­able in PDF form.

You might find issues of the Bul­letin on every­thing from Frank Lloyd Wright to inter­war pho­tog­ra­phy to Kore­an art, as well as cat­a­logs for exhi­bi­tions like Anglo­Ma­nia: Tra­di­tion and Trans­gres­sion in British Fash­ion, The Art of Illu­mi­na­tion: The Lim­bourg Broth­ers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry (whose cen­tral work of cal­en­dri­cal art was pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), Van Gogh in Arles, The Milk­maid by Johannes Ver­meer, and The Poet­ry of Nature: Edo Paint­ings from the Fish­bein-Ben­der Col­lec­tion. Met­Pub­li­ca­tions offers plen­ty of inter­est­ing read­ing, but if you find you sud­den­ly have to do some seri­ous art-his­tor­i­cal research, you’ll also find that it’s a far more con­ve­nient resource than Clau­dia and Jamie had.

Enter the Met­Pub­li­ca­tions dig­i­tal archive here, and, once there, par­tic­u­lar­ly explore the “Free to Down­load” sec­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 490,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

Take a New Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

An Unbe­liev­ably Detailed, Hand-Drawn Map Lets You Explore the Rich Col­lec­tions of the Met Muse­um

A World of Art: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.