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Facilities

The Barber Institute The department is located in the Barber Institute of Fine Art, one of the world’s finest small galleries, and one of Birmingham’s finest purpose-built Art Deco buildings. The institute houses a world renowned collection of art comprising paintings, sculptures, rare coins and seals. Regular exhibitions and concerts allow students to make the most of this unique facility. Visit the Barber Institute Website
Fine Art Library The Barber Institute's exceptional Fine Art Library (of c.60,000 volumes) contains specialist collections of sales catalogues and nineteenth-century books representing most of the major European schools of painting from the early Renaissance to the beginning of the twenty-first century, in addition to excellent holdings in all areas of art history. For more information on the library visit the Fine Art Library website
Visual Resources Library The Department enjoys the benefit of a significant Visual Resources Library. This comprises a Slide Collection, which holds more than 70.000 catalogued slides. Although the vast majority of the slides are of Fine Art images, these are complemented by a substantial Collection of Architectural images and includes collections of Applied Arts and Miscellaneous Subjects. The Library’s main asset, however, is ‘Diaphanous’, a searchable on-line catalogue with high resolution digital images, accessible to students and staff via the intranet. ‘Diaphanous’ holds Digital Images of similar subject matter as the Slide Collection and it can additionally be used as a catalogue for locating “analogue” slides in the Collection.
Coins The University of Birmingham Library provides an additional research resource of international quality, containing almost two million books, a wide range of periodicals and IT facilities. Its research holdings include important collections of historical and art-historical documents such as papers and photographs relating to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.
The City The City of Birmingham also contains one of the finest art galleries in the country with exceptional holdings of old master, Pre-Raphaelite and modern paintings, drawings and prints. Also, the Ikon Gallery, located near the city centre, is one of the UK's premier venues for new art. Together these provide the ideal setting and facilities with which to combine academic study with the day-to-day activities of a major gallery. The city's central location on road and rail networks allows easy access to libraries and art collections elsewhere in the county.