Bibliothèques de musées, bibliothèques universitaires : des collections au service de l’histoire de l’art. Un débat entre Anne-Élisabeth Buxtorf, Pascale Gillet, Catherine Granger et Anne-Solène Rolland

By moving into the Labrouste reading room, the library of the Institut national de l’histoire de l’art will fulfill years of preparation, reflection, and debates that have punctuated its long gestation. As a descendant of the Bibliotheque d’art et d’archeologie Jacques Doucet, its affiliation with the university is today lively and meaningful. The incorporation of the Bibliotheque centrale des musees nationaux, formerly at the Louvre, on January 1, 2016 has invited museums into the heart of INHA’s collections. For the three entities concerned, this change has involved – and still involves – a questioning of the orientation and missions of the libraries they represent. The Louvre museum has launched a vast project of promotion and coordination of its libraries. After extensive preparatory work, the Bibliotheque centrale des musees nationaux (BCMN) has been physically absorbed into the INHA, requiring a necessary examination at the INHA, not only of its history, but also of its project. Indeed, for the INHA library, the foundation stone that is the BCMN consolidates this inauguration in completely renovated spaces: a reading room with four hundred seats, together with open-access stacks containing 150,000 documents on three levels, opening with the Bibliotheque nationale de France and in particular its departement des Estampes et de la photographie, but also with the Ecole nationale des chartes. The three texts that follow must therefore be read interactively as exchanges relating to what makes writing the history of art possible.