Art and Museum Library

The Kunst- und Mu­se­ums­bi­blio­thek (KMB / Art and Mu­se­um Li­brary) is one of the largest public li­braries for mod­ern art and pho­tog­ra­phy world­wide. As a public ref­er­ence li­brary it pro­vides its users ac­cess to lit­er­a­ture, in­for­ma­tio­n­al ma­te­rial, and pho­to­graphs of art from the mid­dle ages to the pre­sent. Its ar­eas of em­pha­sis in­clude:

  • Art of the twen­ti­eth and twen­ty-first cen­turies
  • Im­age pro­duc­tion in the me­dia of pho­tog­ra­phy and film
  • Art of the BENELUX coun­tries (Bel­gi­um, the Nether­lands, Lux­em­burg)

 
Get to the KMB web­site here.

Read­ing Room in the Mu­se­um Lud­wig

Ad­dress: Hein­rich-Böll-Platz, 50667 Cologne
Ac­cess through the south­ern en­trance, Film­fo­rum NRW 

Hours: Mon­day 2–9 p.m., Tues­day–Thurs­day 10 a.m.–9 p.m.,
Fri­day 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Con­sul­ta­tion about the col­lec­tions is avai­l­able un­til 5 p.m.

Ad­di­tio­n­al open­ing hours on Sa­t­ur­days 2023 (11 a.m.–4 p.m.): Click here

On­line Ca­t­a­log

While all the publi­ca­tions in the on­line ca­t­a­logue of the li­brary have been con­firmed, the auc­tion ca­t­a­logues and mi­nor writ­ings must be re­quest­ed on site, in the read­ing rooms.

Rheinisch­es Bil­darchiv Köln, Cologne

Sup­ple­ment­ing the pub­lished hold­ings of the KMB, the Rheinisch­es Bil­darchiv holds over 5 mil­lion pho­to­graphs on art.

Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on im­age re­search, hold­ings, and the dig­i­tal im­age database can be found here.