Books

Browse The World's Most Famous Art Books, For Free

by Caitlin White

Welcome to your next Internet obsession. At least this time, you'll get some culture out of your next web-browsing wormhole time suck: the Metropolitan Museum of Art will now offer hundreds of free art books, 422 to be exact, for download from its website. Free, as in, at absolutely no cost. I know, it's hard to grasp that this amazing news is real life.

MetPublications has "five decades of Met Museum publications on art history available to read, download, and/or search for free." And some of these books are out of print, meaning they are rare and hard to find. And here they are, now right at your fingertips. The MetPublications books range in art form, style, cultural region, and historical time period. In the list of "favorite titles" (which is a good starting point if the number of books offered starts to overwhelm you), you can browse through a book on Ancient Egyptian Calligraphy then jump over to Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the Eighteenth Century, and if you get stuck on that fashion idea, there's then Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, which frankly I could stare at for the rest of my days on Earth.

The Met's move to offer free downloads of art books seems to be part of the organization's ongoing mission to ensure art is accessible to everyone. Last year, the Met put 400,000 high-resolution images of works of art online, for free download and use.

Images: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alexander McQueen/Facebook