Author Saul Bellow once said, “People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.” We completely agree, and the libraries in our campuses are fraught with danger of hours lost, new ideas found, limited edition and original art discovered, and research conducted. Here are some fun facts about our libraries.
Our New York Library
- It holds over 10,000 monographs. That’s millions of works of art that can be found in those pages.
- If you were researching, say, Picasso, you would have access to 59,026 articles on the artist.
- If all the books in the library were divided equally between this year’s MA students, each individual would be in possession of 123 titles.
- Students have access to 50 databases, 150,000 e-books, 70 print subscriptions, and 126 serials—all of which are academic in nature and related to art and the art market.
- The library, housed in our campus in midtown Manhattan is only 9 blocks away from the famed New York City Public Library with its literary lions guarding 5th Avenue. It also boasts a close proximity to the libraries of the Met, MoMA, Guggenheim, Frick, and other institutions that make their resources available to Sotheby's Institute students.
Learn more about our New York campus.
Our London Library
- There are over 14,000 monographs onsite. That is equivalent to 76 books for each MA students.
- The three most borrowed books are: 1) Big Bucks: The Explosion of the Art Market in the 21st Century 2) Understanding Art Markets: Inside the World of Art and Business 3) The Art Fair Age: On Fairs As Urban Entertainment Centers
- The library is walking distance from the British Library, which—with an estimated 150 million items—may well be the biggest in the world.
- Over 2000 MA student dissertations are archived, and frequently accessed by scholars and students from other universities, such as University College London, Goldsmith’s, King’s College London and Warwick University.
Learn more about our London campus.