Paper Trail

CONTEMPORARY ART HISTORY lives on the second floor of the Ronald J. Norick Downtown Library in Oklahoma City. The best part? You can take it home.

Thanks to a recent partnership among ArtDesk, Kirkpatrick Foundation (publisher of ArtDesk), Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, the Metropolitan Library System of Oklahoma County, and Christian Keesee, locals can browse and check out more than 400 books about the key movements and crucial players from the grand sweep of contemporary art—from Bauhaus to Banksy and points in between.

Work by living artists has always been the purview at Oklahoma Contemporary, but the new circulating collection casts a wider net.

“We’re really taking a more art-historical approach to the moment we’re in when it comes to art,” says Jeremiah Matthew Davis, director of Oklahoma Contemporary. “It includes the most recent antecedents to the contemporary movement and the influences that have continued to exert some currents onto artists who are operating today.”

Widening the lens beyond visual art, the collection includes books on architecture, design, music, dance, and more. “Those other components of creativity we celebrate at Oklahoma Contemporary are also present in the library’s collection,” Davis says.

This new home for contemporary art history was once a nondescript area for specialized collections on the downtown library’s second floor. “Before, you had to be either walking around aimlessly to get there, or be very focused on trying to get there,” says Judie Matthews, special collections librarian for the Metropolitan Library System.

Now the space is infused with a new sense of purpose and discovery, and it’s bringing in new patrons interested in learning more about contemporary art. “For me, that’s the most exciting element,” Matthews says. “We see a new audience, or a way to reach people by offering something very new.”

The library collection was born from the hundreds of books received by ArtDesk magazine, review copies sent to the editors for possible inclusion in “The Book Report” section. With the stacks growing for more than eight years, the magazine’s co-founder, Keesee, suggested a publicly accessible library collection could be formed around the beautiful, award-winning books. Individual donors have contributed books to the collection, too.

“I’ve written most of our book reviews over the last seven years,” says managing editor Alana Ruiz de la Peña. “Paging through these books has given me a great appreciation for what are truly the highest standards in publishing. To hold the world’s greatest art in our hands, as readers, brings so much possibility.”

The goal for the Oklahoma Contemporary Art Reference Library is to provide that same kind of magic for others—one book at a time.

The Oklahoma Contemporary Art Reference Library is located in Oklahoma City on the second floor of the Ronald J. Norick Downtown Library. metrolibrary.org