Le musée vu du parc de sculptures

The Museum

Located 20 minutes from Lille, between Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Luxembourg and London, the LaM is one of the most important museums in northern Europe.
If you want to get even more out of your visit, prepare a lesson or presentation, do a spot of research or simply keep up with the news, then the Museum Library is the place to go!


En raison d'une série de travaux menée par la Métropole Européenne de Lille et le LaM visant à rénover les bâtiments du musée, la bibliothèque sera fermée à partir du 1er avril 2024 et rouvrira en début d'année 2026.

Durant les travaux, la consultation des collections de la bibliothèque se fera uniquement sur rendez-vous et sera exclusivement réservée aux chercheurs, professionnels et étudiants à partir du niveau master. Pour prendre rendez-vous : dbozo@musee-lam.fr. Merci d'indiquer l’objet de votre recherche dans votre message.

La bibliothèque 

Avec plus de 56 000 livres et revues sur l’art des 20e et 21e siècles, la bibliothèque du LaM est une référence pour tout ce qui concerne l'art moderne, l'art contemporain et l'art brut. Poussez sa porte ou prenez rendez-vous et nourrissez-vous de la mine d'informations qu'elle recèle. Pour en savoir plus, rendez-vous sur le catalogue en ligne !

 

Donations at the heart of the Library

When Geneviève and Jean Masurel donated the art collection that gave birth to the LaM, they wanted a library to be created at the Museum and also donated a part of their own library and Roger Dutilleul’s, which contains a wealth of information on the first half of the 20th century, cubism and naïve art in particular. This initial collection has been complemented by donations and bequests over the course of the years.

In 1994, Dominique Bozo, former Director of the National Museum of Modern Art and President of the Centre Pompidou, bequeathed over 5,500 works on modern and contemporary art.

Maurice Jardot, Director of the Louise Leiris Gallery, heir to the Gallery owned by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the first art dealer to handle cubist works, bequeathed over 2,000 books, some of them illustrated by such artists as André Masson, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso...
Both of them knew Jean Masurel very well and wanted to mark their attachment to the museum in this fashion.

In 1999, the L’Aracine association donated its library and archives, providing the LaM Library with a benchmark collection of documents on art brut, which has since been complemented by donations, including from Michel Nedjar, founder member of L’Aracine, and Kiyoko Lerner, who inherited Henry Darger’s works.

The Library adds between 500 and 800 works to its collections every year, through donations, exchanges and purchases.

Consult the various collections here:
L’Aracine I Bozo I Jardot I Masurel I Nedjar

A benchmark art brut collection

The library’s possesses France’s benchmark collection of works on art brut. Over 3,500 books and journals from the 19th century to the present day document artists and how their works were received; including landmark works such as those by Marcel Réja, Hans Prinzhorn and Jean Dubuffet, pamphlets published between the 1950s and 1980s, and French and international exhibition catalogues.

The collection also includes complete sets of such journals as Les Fascicules de l’art brut, Gazogène, Zon’art, Les Friches de l’art and L’œuf sauvage.

It is complemented by substantial archives.
L’Aracine’s archives contain files on artists included in and absent from the collection, documentary files on institutions, museums and galleries presenting art brut, theme-based files on spirits and mediums, “dweller-landscapers” and children’s drawings, along with documentation produced by L’Aracine itself in the context of its various activities.
Michel Nedjar’s archives, which contain a wealth of photographs, correspondence and documents, document his own work and L’Aracine history alike. Louise Tournay’s archives, donated by Claire Teller, those bearing on Augustin Lesage donated by his niece, on Henry Darger by Kiyoko Lerner, on Postman Cheval by Claude and Clovis Prévost, André Escard’s on art brut and marginal art, and the psychiatrist Claude Wiart’s archives all provide researchers with a whole range of remarkable documents

View these collections’ inventories on the INHA and CCfr websites:
Lesage I Facteur Cheval/Prévost I L’Aracine I Louise Tournay

Magazines from yesteryear to the present day

The Library subscribes to almost 50 national and international periodicals: general interest, such as art press, Beaux-Arts Magazine, Connaissance des Arts, and specialised, including Les Cahiers du MNAM, Esse, Grey Room, Marges and Raw Vision.

These periodicals are freely accessible in situ.

The Library also possesses an outstanding collection of avant-garde and surrealist journals, including Cahiers d’art, Documents, L’Esprit nouveau, Verve, La Révolution surréaliste, Le surréalisme au service de la révolution, Médium, Néon and L’archibras.

To find out more, consult the catalogue by clicking here.

An outstanding heritage

Francis Bacon, André Derain, Georges Braque, André Masson, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Ida Appelbroog, Pierre Buraglio, Daniel Dezeuze, Allan McCollum, Jean-Luc Parant and Vladimir Velickovic: the Library conserves a priceless collection of books illustrated with original prints and artist’s books, mostly from Dominique Bozo’s and Maurice Jardot’s bequests.

You can find these books in the Museum’s installations and exhibitions as well as in the display cases devoted to them in the Library.
Hands-on presentations of these books are organised regularly at the Library: consult the Museum programme!

A number of them, books and artworks combined, are also in the Museum’s online collection. Discover them here.

Dweller-landscapers

Based on the Library’s archive collection, the Museum has uploaded a database on “dweller-landscapers” (habitants paysagistes), men and women who, like Postman Cheval, transformed their living environments in order to “experience the world poetically”. New content from the Museum archives and internauts’ contributions is regularly added to the database.

Consult the database ici.

Nuit bibliothèque carré

Découvrez le catalogue de la bibliothèque ! 

Parcourez les plus de 56 000 livres et revues sur l’art des 20e et 21e siècle.

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