Download 200+ Free Modern Art Books from the Guggenheim Museum

For at least half a decade now, New York’s Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um has been dig­i­tiz­ing its exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logs and oth­er art books. Now you can find all of the pub­li­ca­tions made avail­able so far — not just to read, but to down­load in PDF and ePub for­mats — at the Inter­net Archive. If you’ve vis­it­ed the Guggen­heim’s non-dig­i­tal loca­tion on Fifth Avenue even once, you know how much effort the insti­tu­tion puts toward the preser­va­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion of mod­ern art, and that comes through as much in its print­ed mate­r­i­al as it does in its shows.

Among the more than 200 Guggen­heim art books avail­able on the Inter­net Archive, you’ll find one on a 1977 ret­ro­spec­tive of Col­or Field painter Ken­neth Noland, one on the ever-vivid icon-mak­ing pop artist Roy Licht­en­stein, and one on the exis­ten­tial slo­gans — “MONEY CREATES TASTE,” “PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT,” “LACK OF CHARISMA CAN BE FATAL” — sly­ly, dig­i­tal­ly insert­ed into the lives of thou­sands by Jen­ny Holz­er. Oth­er titles, like Expres­sion­ism, a Ger­man Intu­ition 1905–1920, From van Gogh to Picas­so, from Kandin­sky to Pol­lock, and painter Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky’s own Point and Line to Plane, go deep­er into art his­to­ry.

Where to start amid all these books of mod­ern (and even some of pre-mod­ern) art? You might con­sid­er first hav­ing a look at the books in the Inter­net Archive’s Guggen­heim col­lec­tion about the Guggen­heim itself: the hand­book to its col­lec­tion up through 1980, for instance, or 1991’s Mas­ter­pieces from the Guggen­heim Col­lec­tion: From Picas­so to Pol­lock, or the fol­low­ing year’s Guggen­heim Muse­um A to Z, or Art of this Cen­tu­ry: The Guggen­heim Muse­um and its Col­lec­tion from the year after that. But just as when you pay a vis­it to the Guggen­heim itself, you should­n’t wor­ry too much about what order you see every­thing in; the impor­tant thing is to look with inter­est.

Explore the col­lec­tion of 200+ art books and cat­a­logues here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 448 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Down­load Over 300+ Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

The Guggen­heim Puts Online 1600 Great Works of Mod­ern Art from 575 Artists

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.