Reading Images:Art Libraries in Norfolk, VA Promoting visual literacy and preserving art information at the Hofheimer Art Library and Jean Outland Chrysler Library

Elise N. Hofheimer Art Library

Old Dominion University Libraries

What is our purpose?

To support learning, teaching and research in Art History, Studio Art and Art Education

What is in our collection?Over 10,000 volumes on painting, sculpture, drawing, print media, photography, architecture and arts & crafts. 

Over 30 periodical subscriptions Artist books and exhibition catalogs

What resources do we offer?

Computer workstations, high-resolution scanner and photocopier

Audiovisual equipment and Art DVDs

Hofheimer Art Library Website

Hofheimer Art Library Blog

What online resources are available?

Old Dominion University Art Department Digital Image Database

Scholarly full-text and image databases including Oxford Art Online and ARTstor

What online resources are available?

What services do we provide?

In-depth research consultations

Instruction sessions Class tours

Online research guides Individual class guides Writing and citation guide

The Hofheimer Art Library actively supports faculty research and publication

How are faculty involved?

Faculty make recommendations for purchasing and evaluating materials

Dr. Robert Wojtowicz, Art History

Greta Pratt in Art in America, Photography

Kenneth Fitzgerald, Graphic Design

Rotating exhibits featuring Hofheimer Art Library materials and student artwork

Specialized collection of Self-Taught & Outsider Art materials, in collaboration with the Baron & Ellin Gordon Art Galleries

What makes us unique?

The Jean Outland Chrysler Library

The Chrysler has a library? The Jean Outland Chrysler Library is a 112,000+ volume

closed stacks art research library collecting materials referencing the fine arts, decorative arts, museology, and related disciplines. The purpose of the Library is to support all scholarly activities of the Chrysler Museum of Art and to enable research related to its collections.

The Library serves the staff of the Chrysler Museum and is also open to the public during regular hours Wednesday - Friday 10 – 4:45.

What do we collect? Monographs about fine and decorative art, and related topics.

55,000+

Periodicals, along with access to electronic journals through JSTOR

24,000+

Auction Catalogs 30,000+

Rare books and folios

2,000+

Artist Files 300+ Cubic feet

Archival Collections

Multiple

What we can help with… Provide research assistance to

the Chrysler Museum Staff to assist in the preservation and presentation of the Museum collection.

Provide as a primary source of information for the public about the Chrysler Museum Art Collections and history.

Preserve collections and items of enduring intrinsic , artistic, and historical value.

Assist with general requests about art history, art work, and other topics not related to the Museum Collection.

What makes us unique?

Preservation collections and items of enduring intrinsic , artistic, and historical value.

The Knoedler Library

Myers Family Collections

Records of the Chrysler Museum and its antecedents including :

The Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences

Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. Papers and the Provincetown Museum papers.

Promoting Visual Literacy“Visual Literacy refers to a group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences. The development of these competencies is fundamental to normal human learning. When developed, they enable a visually literate person to discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects, symbols, natural or man-made, that he encounters in his environment. Through the creative use of these competencies, he is able to communicate with others. Through the appreciative use of these competencies, he is able to comprehend and enjoy the masterworks of visual communication.” - John Debes, 1969

International Visual Literacy Association

Art Libraries provide a variety of unique tools to help with this process.

It all starts with looking.

http://collectiononline.chrysler.org/OBJECT_edit.asp?id=37737&page=1

86.457Conch-Shell Trumpet, 300-550Pre-Columbian | Mayan | Guatemala

Your turn: what is it?

Collaboration and Changes

“Someone said to me, these libraries aren’t important anymore, because you can get it all online. But you can’t. If

you Google an artist and Google the images, you get no information — you don’t get where the painting is, you don’t get the medium, you don’t get the sizes, you don’t get the

provenance. So these libraries are really important.”

- Actor, writer and art collector Steve Martin

Where do we go from here?