Established in 1987 thanks to a gift from the Wallach family, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs unites what had formerly been separate departments under a single banner. Divisional holdings comprise works of art as well as reference materials on painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography and the history of architecture from prehistoric times to the present. The Wallach Division also serves as the access point to the Spencer Collection of illustrated books and manuscripts and fine bindings. In 2017, the Picture Collection also joined the Wallach team. Together, these five collections include more than one million works of art in various mediums and formats, complemented by nearly 700,000 monographs and periodicals. The quality, depth and scope of these holdings have earned the Wallach Division an international reputation among a broad variety of scholars and lovers of art. If you would like a more detailed description of a particular collection, please click on the Collection's website available below.

If you are an educator in New York City, and are interested in bringing in your class for a visit to any of the Wallach Collections, please request a class visit. As a public institution, we believe that students of all levels of experience and learning styles have the right to access, discover, and connect with special collections.

We work with educators to design class visits that use the Library's collections to foster creative inquiry, visual literacy skills, and inspire wonder and excitement around the process of research and discovery.