AMNH Art Survey

According to Nina Root’s “Biography of a Museum Library,” Marion Carr, the head of the Membership department, began to collect, store, and record the location of artwork in the Musuem in the 1950s. The Museum's art came from multiple sources: created as parts of exhibitions, commissioned for Museum founders and trustees, and through donation. After her retirement in 1974, the collection of artworks, portraits, and memorabilia was transferred to the Library. Some departments (notably Ornithology and Vertebrate Paleontology) continued to maintain administrative control of their art collections. In 1992, Joel Sweimler completed an inventory of the art throughout the Museum—on exhibit and in storage—as part of an National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant. The inventoried works were added to a database and later the library catalog. Since then, Library staff have continued efforts to better record the administrative control, conservation work, and up-to-date location information for artworks in the Museum, both in the Art Survey and beyond.