Art & Music, Sports & Recreation Collections   Tags: art, cds, compact disc, lps, music, photography, recreation, slides, song index, sports  

New books, CDs, and sheet music are added to the collection all year round. Browse the New Arrivals list, or call Art & Music to learn about how to get email alerts when new items are added in specific subject areas or genres.

New Books and Sheet Music

New CDs

new & exciting!

Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974

Call Number: 709.04076 En25

Traces the emergence of the artistic impulses to use the earth as material, land as medium, and to locate works in remote sites, beyond familiar art contexts.

Dayna's Picks: Surrealist Social Commentary in Art

Toxic Beauty: The Art of Frank Moore

Call Number: 709.2 M782k

ISBN: 9780934349178

Beautiful and disturbing! Moore takes on environmentalism, AIDS, science, and makes it look like a fairy tale, until you notice what's really going on there.

Dark Metropolis: Irving Norman's Social Surrealism

Call Number: 759.1 N784d

ISBN: 9781597140416

The paintings are incredibly bleak, but Norman was ever-hopeful that pointing out horrifying behavior could promote change. Incredibly detailed, absorbing, and thought-provoking.

Welcome to the Art & Music Department!

We're located on the 5th floor of the Central Library
in downtown Berkeley

2090 Kittredge St. Berkeley, California, 94704 (510) 981-6241

contact us by email

or ask a librarian a brief research question

Learn More About Our Services

Music Resources

Art Resources

Film Resources

Sports and Recreation Resoures

Art, Music, & Recreation Clip Files

Historic newspaper clippings and ephemera related to Berkeley artists, architects, athletes, cultural institutions, and more. Download a list of the file headings for the A&M Clip Files.

Slide Collection

Art & Music has the only publicly-accessible circulating slide collection in the Bay Area, containing 25,000 images from early cave painting to contemporary installation art.

Song Index

The BPL Song Index is a collection of over 270 books of sheet music indexed by song title. Allows one to easily find lyrics/music to many popular, folk, jazz, Broadway, and religious songs. Try searching the Online Song Index during the beta testing phase.

Museum Passes for Free through Discover and Go!

You can get free passes to more than 30 Bay Area cultural venues. Passes are available for printing online! Log in with your Berkeley Public Library card to our Discover and Go website at http://discover.berkeleypubliclibrary.org and select your passes today.

Please note:

• You can search for passes by venue or by date. Passes are valid only for a specific date.
• Once passes are printed, reservations cannot be cancelled or changed.
• You must present picture ID to use the pass and it must match the name on the pass.
• Children’s cards cannot be used to reserve passes. This is due to ID and other requirements on the venues’ part.
• Only two passes can be reserved at one time (there is no limit to total passes used).
• For additional information about Discover & Go, please see our FAQ.

The Art & Music Department, with the support of the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library, presents a range of free events throughout the year to encourage arts appreciation and participation.

Current Exhibition:

Extended through May 24th!

Oakland Renaissance Jazz Series
The Photography of Kamau Amen-Ra, Edward Miller, Tumani Onabiyi and Wanda Sabir
February 11 - May 24, 2013

This series of jazz photography captures performances held in a variety of Bay Area venues including the East Side Cultural Center and the 57th Street Gallery in Oakland.  This group of artists have been documenting the rich history of jazz performance in the Bay Area for over a quarter of a century.

Check back soon!

Playreaders

Super Cinema