National Art Library, Reference library at Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London, United Kingdom.
The National Art Library is a public research library inside the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London, focused on books and documents about fine and decorative arts. Its holdings cover books, periodicals, exhibition catalogs, and auction records across a wide range of artistic disciplines.
The library was founded in 1837 as the library of the Government School of Design and grew into a public research facility. It received its current name in 1865 and has grown alongside the museum ever since.
The library sits at the heart of the Victoria and Albert Museum and draws craftspeople, designers, and researchers who use its holdings for active work. Inside the reading rooms, visitors see people working with old catalogs and rare periodicals on real projects.
To access the collection, visitors need to register online for a reader's card in advance and can visit only on specific weekdays. Material requests should be submitted early in the day, as deadlines close in the early afternoon.
The collection holds handwritten-annotated auction catalogs with historical prices and buyer names, some of them still not fully cataloged. These records offer a rare look into how the art market and collecting worked in earlier centuries.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 60,000 contributors worldwide.
