The Cool and Collected tour will offer an exclusive experiential look at the remarkably engineered and designed University of Minnesota Andersen Library caverns that hold various archival and special collections. The two-story high caverns were excavated from the limestone bluffs of the Mississippi River, and extend the length of two football fields. They contain more than 1.5 million volumes of books, manuscripts, illustrations and artifacts. After a twenty-minute tour of the cavern, attendees will get a "hands-on" look at selections of local artists' books and zines from The Francis V. Gorman Rare Art Books, Media, and Artist's Archives. Viewers will understand the careful considerations that went into the construction of the University of Minnesota Caverns and how our institution preserves important materials for posterity. Attendees will learn about the superbly active artists' book and zine communities in the Twin Cities and be able to identify some of the local greats found at the UMN's collection.
The Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles is home to the Getty Library, an integral component of the GRI that serves the program’s mission to cultivate advanced knowledge of art and its varied histories through its numerous library services, programs, and collecting areas. For ARLIS’s 2025 virtual conference, GRI library and archives staff will provide a tour of the Getty Library that will highlight a selection of materials from the library’s extensive collections of over 1.5 million books and periodicals and over 15 miles of archives and special collections; the processing, cataloging, collection development, and reference activities that ensure these materials are accessible for researchers; as well as the physical spaces of the library, including architectural features of the building designed by architect Richard Meier.
The tour will spotlight work done by library and archives staff from a variety of departments, touching on the Getty Library’s various collection development areas; the logistics of circulation and interlibrary loan requests; the archival processing activities for both special collections and institutional archives; and cataloging work for the vast array of published materials in the Getty Library.
Information on Getty Library programs and initiatives will also be included, such as the annual library research grants that support the work of emerging and experienced art historians, and library and archival collections acquired in support of the Getty’s African American Art History Initiative, including the Whitney and Lee Kaplan Collection and the Johnson Publishing Company Archive.
