Visual Arts Resource Library

College of Fine Arts | School of Visual Arts

The Visual Arts Resource Library is a reading room servicing School of Visual Arts faculty members and students as well as members of the larger University community. The Library is open 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; these hours are subject to change.

Collection and Services

The Visual Arts Resource Library is a non-circulating collection of books, exhibition catalogues, directories, magazines, slides, and sound recordings available for SVA students and faculty.  New books are added yearly, and a list of these additions may be obtained from Emily Wade, the Resource Librarian.  In addition to housing a 4,000 volume reference collection, which includes many rare and unique items, the library frequently hosts events, including the school's Artist Development Series, a lecture and workshop series targeted at career development education for young artists. 

The Visual Arts Resource Library also features web access, making Mugar Memorial Library online catalogue of books, electronic journals, and indexes available for further research needs. Printing is also available to students with CFA lab accounts.

Learn more about the library on the blog.

Karl Fortess Audio Archive

(Audio Archive can be accessed in the Visual Arts Resource Library)

Karl Eugene Fortess (1907–1993), painter and printmaker, taught from 1956 to 1973 at Boston University’s School of Visual Arts, where he headed the printmaking department. From the 1960s to the 1980s, he undertook a major project of creating 269 “audio-portraits” (sound recording interviews) of American artists, including a personal project overview that he made exclusively for the School of Visual Arts. He believed that art students needed and wanted to learn about the inner lives of artists in addition to their techniques and craftsmanship. His interviews focused on the artists’ career development, their sources of influence and inspiration, their self-understandings of purpose, and their reflections on teaching and learning.

Fortess gave the School of Visual Arts cassette copies of his interviews. Those copies are the source of the Resource Library’s collection of Fortess interview digital transfers on CD. The list of interviews in the library’s collection includes many prominent American artists of the twentieth century, among them Romare Bearden, Thomas Hart Benton, Louise Bourgeois, Helen Frankenthaler, Philip Guston, Alex Katz, Jacob Lawrence, Jack Levine, Robert Motherwell, and Alice Neel.  All original Fortess recordings as well as digital transfers of many of the interviews are held at Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.

Recordings of the School of Visual Arts’ Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series are also available for access in the Resource Library.  This growing list of sound and video recordings features Sandy Skoglund, Willie Cole, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Hannelilne Rogeberg, Matthew Ritchie in conversation with Jerry Saltz, Peter Schjeldahl, and Chuck Close in conversation with Rob Storr.

Career and Artist Development

Employment Opportunities and Internships

Exhibition Opportunities

Information on employment opportunities, exhibitions, fellowships, and grants are also available in the library. Literature on graduate degree, study abroad, and summer programs are on file as well.

Contact Us

Boston University, School of Visual Arts
Visual Arts Resource Library
855 Commonwealth Ave., Room 501
Boston, MA 02215
617-353-5707