East Asia Section: East Asian Art History

In Europe, there is no specialized library of comparable importance and scope for the scientific study of the art and visual culture of East Asia. The library offers access to about 30,000 volumes of monographs and about 15,000 volumes of periodicals, including historical ones, in East Asian and many Western languages. Of the approximately 500 journal titles - 100 of which are current subscriptions - the library has 50 titles in its sole possession throughout Germany.

Of particular note is a rich collection of exhibition catalogs, including over 4,000 volumes of the Japan Art Catalog (JAC) of the National Art Center Tokyo (NACT), which was supplied from Japan until 2009 as an annual donation to ensure the record of these art catalogs on the European continent.

Since the Institute's founding in 1965, an extensive slide library has been built up for research and teaching purposes, including reproduced images from books as well as unique visual material brought back by scholars from research trips and excursions. The currently about 132,000 slides form the source basis for many different questions. The stock of 13,000 original slides has been scanned and made accessible in the Heidelberg image database HeidICON.

A number of facsimiles of horizontal scrolls and early art journals enable research very close to original sources.

An extensive collection of Korean research publications has been built up over the years in close collaboration with visiting professors, doctoral students, and through the process of document exchange.

Collection focus

• Art and architecture, with a focus on Buddhism
• Chinese archaeology and excavation reports
• Painting of Japan, with emphasis on "narrative painting"
• Chinese painting
• Calligraphy in China and Japan
• Exhibition catalogs
• Aesthetics
• Conservation techniques
• Relations of East Asian countries with each other and with Western countries in the field of art and culture

Special collections

• Facsimiles of early Japanese art periodicals such as Kokka 国華, Shirakaba 白樺 etc.
• Japanese woodblock prints