Latin American art resources north of the border: an overview of the collections of the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC)

Abstract

The New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC), consisting of The Frick Art Reference Library and the libraries of the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), houses significant collections of material on Latin American art that document the cultural history of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and South America, as well as the foundation of New York City as an epicenter of US Latino and Latin American cultural production since the 19th century. Ranging from historic archeological photographs to contemporary artists’ books, the holdings of the NYARC libraries are varied in their scope and record the contributions of Latin American and Latino artists to the international art scene. With the creation of Arcade, the shared online catalog of the Frick, MoMA and Brooklyn Museum, the ‘collective collection’ of material about and from Latin America has been strengthened in ways both expected and unanticipated. Techniques for integrating Latin American bibliographic information into discovery platforms, strategies for increasing the visibility of these collections, and ideas for providing improved access to the Latin American subset of the NYARC collections are being explored, and many further opportunities exist to engage in co-operative collection development in this area, across the NYARC consortium and with other peer institutions.