Godshuizenlaan 2A
9000 Gent, België
UPDATE COVID-19: Kunstenbibliotheek and Conservatoriumbibliotheek are part of the services of KASK & Conservatorium therefore the libraries will be closed from 29 October until 30 November. From 12 November on, you can contact us via e-mail to reserve, collect and return books.
You can contact us for further information via kunstenbibliotheek@hogent.be
Mo, Tu and We 9u00 – 18u00
Th 9u00 – 22u00
Fr 9u00 – 16u00
Closed on Weekends and bank holidays
Closed on 2 November and 11 November
Closed from 21 December until 3 January
kunstenbibliotheek@hogent.be
+32 (0)9 243 36 89
De Kunstenbibliotheek brengt de collecties van KASK (School of Arts – HOGENT), S.M.A.K., Design Museum, STAM, HISK en de Gentse Gidsen samen onder één dak.
Kunstenbibliotheek wordt beheerd door KASK & Conservatorium (School of Arts – HOGENT)
On Thursday 22 October 2020 (from 6 p.m.) BOEKS 6 is presented: ‘Post-Comics. Beyond Comics, Illustration and The Graphic Novel’ (based on a concept by Sébastien Conard), Boeks 6 includes an expo, a printing performance and a lecture. In the cellarium, work by graphic design students (KASK) will be shown in a scenography by KASK alumnus graphic design Linh Dong.
Suggested reading list on feminism, identity and art, on black identity/diaspora, art and culture. This reading list is only a selection, it’s based on the collection of Kunstenbibliotheek and largely inspired on selections made by guests from Kunstenbibliotheek’s program Essential Reading: #1 with Eva Barois De Caevel, #3 with Nat Muller, #5 with Christine Eyene and suggestions made by Ariella Azoulay and Els Roelandt.
Proposal for a Possible Collection is a display of artists’ books, magazines, zines, ephemera and other printed matter published by small or independent publishers, independent organizations, collectives, artists or writers, collected by Kunstenbibliotheek.
Essential Reading is a project that aims to enlarge, diversify and enrich Kunstenbibliotheek’s book collection. Which books are, today, really indispensable for an art library? Guests of Essential Reading bring together and present in the library the books they consider most valuable in their life and work.
BOEKS is a platform for showing books on the Bijloke site in Ghent. Every month, for one night, a book, its maker and publisher take center stage. Afterwards, remains stick around on walls, ceilings and floors. Along the way a BOEKS collection comes into being.
BOEKS celebrates printed matter, thick and thin, young and old, unique and serial, legible and illegible. Above all, BOEKS loves and highlights precisely those books that ask for it, because they are good, still unknown or fed up with the stacks or boxes they are confined to. BOEKS collaborates, contextualizes, supports and produces. The platform shows text, visual art and graphic design.
BOEKS is housed in the cellarium, a 15th-century convent corridor connecting the Kunstenbibliotheek with the STAM. BOEKS is an initiative of KASK and the Kunstenbibliotheek.
More info at boeks.gent
In 2015 1m3 was initiated as an exhibition space dedicated to artists’ books from Kunstenbibliotheek’s collection. A guest curator is asked to make her/his selection from the library and present it within the vitrines of 1m3.
Suggested reading list on feminism, identity and art, on black identity/diaspora, art and culture. This reading list is only a selection, it’s based on the collection of Kunstenbibliotheek and largely inspired on selections made by guests from Kunstenbibliotheek’s program Essential Reading: #1 with Eva Barois De Caevel, #3 with Nat Muller, #5 with Christine Eyene and suggestions made by Ariella Azoulay and Els Roelandt.
This week (22 -29 October), #StudiumReads Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019). In this experimental history book, Professor Saidiya Hartman (Columbia University) offers us the stories of young Black women living in early 20th Century New York. These are women who are expected to know their place in White America, and lead poor and submissive lives. Using historical source materials, Hartman excavates and exposes a contrarian and unexpected narratives of their lives. These young women turn out to choose for lives full of joy and personal autonomy; they live rich sexual and queer lives, mother and raise children out of wedlock, and/or freely pursue romances and loves with the men of their own choosing. Prof. Hartman provides us a far more complete and intimate understanding of young urban Black women in America; they are far more than victims of their times and circumstances. Hartman’s rejection of dominant representations and conceptualizations of Black women in history, essentially rewrites American history.
Kunstenbibliotheek closely follows up the artscene and weekly presents new aquisitions. Next to general collection development, Kunstenbibliotheek focusses on the following themes:
• The city of Ghent, books on artists, designers, architects or writers born or living in Ghent.
• Publications linked to the activities of Kunstenbibliotheek’s different partners (KASK, Design museum Gent, HISK, SMAK, STAM, Gentse Gidsen). Kunstenbibliotheek’s collection wants to become an accurate reflection of the activities of collaborators, staff, guests, alumni or students)
• Positions from the so-called geographical and/or intellectual periphery: publications on art and art theory from Asia, Middle East, Africa, South America with a special attention for decolonization theory, gender and LGBTQ studies.
• In the past three years a first catch-up movement was made in collecting publications about and from female artists and/or authors or curators. Kunstenbibliotheek continues this policy in the year to come.
The artists’ books collection comprises different types of artist’s publications, limited editions, book objects, and other multiples. The collection is devoted to historical as well as contemporary bookworks. A large part of the historical collection comprises books of the 20th century avantgarde movements and minimal art, whereas the contemporary section has a specialized focus on artist’s self-publishing of the recent years.
In addition to the self-published works by artists, the collection carries works by specialised publishers such as Lubok, Motto Books, MER Paper Kunsthalle, Art Paper Editions, Roma Publications, and Imschoot Uitgevers, etc. The collection can be consulted via the online catalogue and the image bank. The publications themselves are available on request by making an appointment.
A selection of the book presentations can be found at:
https://kaskbooks.tumblr.com
The current volumes of the magazine subscriptions are available in the art library but are not lent out. Articles from previous years can be requested by e-mail.
In the summer of 2018 Kunstenbibliotheek started its Zines collection. This collection has not yet been catalogued.
The Karel Geirlandt Collection is named after the first chairman of the Association for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent (now SMAK). The collection was started when the Association was founded and grew with the museum. It forms a closed whole and contains books on art from 1945 to 2003 with a specialisation in conceptual and minimal art in Europe and the United States, and the artworks and artists collected by SMAK. This collection can only be consulted in the library.
Consult the databases at home (only for students and staff KASK & Conservatorium)
• Art Source
• Arts Premium Collection
• Artstor
Interesting:
• Google Scholar
• CaGeWeb
• Apache
The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) was founded by painter Ph. K. Marissal in 1748. KASK’s archive dates from 1770 and was supplemented until the middle of the 20th century. It consists of an arts archive and an administrative archive.
The arts archive consists mainly of academic drawings, architecture and visual arts, as well as sculptures, paintings and posters. The academic drawings contain examples of the different drawing methods that were taught, more specifically drawing according to prints, plaster or living models.
The collection includes drawings by artists from the Latem group, such as Gust De Smet, Léon De Smet, Albert Servaes and architectural drawings by former students such as Alphons Groothaert, Victor Horta, Geo Henderick, G.Eysselink, paintings awarded the J.Pipyn prize by H.Malfait, J.Burssens, Steve Schepens, Steven Balen and others.
The art archive can be consulted via the catalogue and the image bank http://bib.hogent.be and can be viewed by appointment.
