It’s no secret that art books are expensive. They’re wonderful resources and often great reads, but just a few titles can set you back hundreds of dollars.
The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry is listed at $138. on Amazon.
The Art of Illumination, Metropolitan Museum Catalog
You could order it, pay for shipping, and wait for delivery. Or, you can download it—along with 437 other titles—now and enjoy it immediately, courtesy of the Met, at no charge. Just visit MetPublications on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website and look for the category: Book Titles with Full Text Online. You can also use this link.
MetPublications
Additionally, the Met has made over 400,000 high-res art images available online through a program that they call Open Access for Scholarly Content or OASC.
Artist: Paul Klee (German (born Switzerland), Münchenbuchsee 1879–1940 Muralto-Locarno)
Date: 1919
Medium: Watercolor and ink on paper mounted on cardboard
Dimensions: 8 x 10 3/8 in. (20.3 x 26.4 cm)
Classification: Drawings
Credit Line: The Berggruen Klee Collection, 1987
Accession Number: 1987.455.1
Enjoy. And if you’re able, help support your local arts institutions. They exist for us.
About MetPublications:
MetPublications is a portal to the Met’s comprehensive publishing program with 1,500 titles, including books, online publications, and Bulletins and Journals from the last five decades.
MetPublications includes a description and table of contents for most titles, as well as information about the authors, reviews, awards, and links to related Met titles by author and by theme. Current book titles that are in-print may be previewed and fully searched online, with a link to purchase the book. The full contents of almost all other book titles may be read online, searched, or downloaded as a PDF. Many of these out-of-print books will be available for purchase, when rights permit, through print-on-demand capabilities in association with Yale University Press. For the Met’s Bulletin, all but the most recent issue can be downloaded as a PDF. For the Met’s Journal, all individual articles and entire volumes can be downloaded as a PDF.
Readers may also locate works of art from the Met’s collections that are included in every book and periodical title and access the most recent information about these works in Collections.
Readers are also directed to every title located in library catalogues on WATSONLINE and WorldCat.
Please check back frequently for updates and new book titles.
MetPublications is made possible by Hunt & Betsy Lawrence.