VISITORS TO THE Oklahoma Contemporary Art Reference Library can flip through the many art books on display on pedestals throughout the shelves. They can lay them open on the tables under the walls of windows overlooking downtown Oklahoma City. Unlike similar collections, patrons with public library cards can check the books out and take them home.
Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center executive director Trent Riley says the reference library, located on the second floor of the Ronald J. Norick Downtown Library in Oklahoma City, makes art more accessible to the community by loaning out its resources through the Metropolitan Library System.
“In other libraries you wouldn’t always have that opportunity,” Riley says. “If you were within a university setting, for instance, many of the works included in the reference collection are often not books you can check out due to them usually being larger, hardback, and just more expensive books than, say, a novel or something like that you would typically find on the library shelves.”
Judith Matthews, special collections and research librarian with Oklahoma City’s Metropolitan Library System, said the Oklahoma Contemporary Art Reference Library opened in 2022 with about four hundred books, mostly donated by ArtDesk from its collection of review copies provided by publishers. Through more donations and purchases made through grants from the Kirkpatrick Foundation, the reference library has since grown to about 2,500 volumes. The library also fulfills inter-library loan requests from libraries throughout the United States.
Recent collaborations with Oklahoma Contemporary include a neon-light display and take-home kits providing materials and instructions for creating shadow puppets and embroidery projects.
“The Oklahoma Contemporary Art Reference Library is a little one-of-a-kind in that it’s a circulating part of a public library,” Matthews says. “Some of these books that are expensive or rare or niche are not available in public libraries across the country. It really sets Oklahoma City as a leader in contemporary art, and that for me is one of the most exciting things.”
For more information about the Oklahoma Contemporary Art Reference Library in Oklahoma City metrolibrary.org