The Joy of Art in Libraries
Posted October 23, 2025 by Michaela O'Gara-Pratt
As a child, I grew up fascinated by the architecture of my local public library. Designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, the decorative wood interior has always sparked my imagination and creativity. The settings of the fantasy novels I grew up reading seemed to come alive inside of the stained-glass windows created by John La Farge.
I am glad that in the late 19th century there was a push to make public spaces so beautiful. In many ways, a lot of these old New England libraries are more accessible museums. An individual can visit the murals painted by John Singer Sargent at the Copley Branch of the Boston Public Library without the entry fee associated with the Museum of Fine Arts, which also holds examples of Sargent’s murals.
As a budding librarian with an interest in art, I am excited by the intersections of art and public education. Recently, the Boston Public Library received a significant donation to restore the third floor of the historic McKim Building. This project would increase public access to some of the library’s extensive art collections, including work by Dutch artist Rembrandt.
The Copley Branch of the Boston Public Library is particularly rich with art resources. In addition to Sargent’s murals, the McKim Building also includes paintings by Edwin Austin Abbey, who was commissioned to decorate what used to be the Book Delivery Room when the building was first constructed. These paintings depict Sir Galahad’s quest for the Holy Grail, a famous Arthurian legend. As a high school student in Boston, reading Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King for class, our field trip to the library expanded my understanding of what a library could offer. Not only could I collect my copy of Tennyson’s work from the circulation desk, but I could also visualize one of the stories via Abbey’s work on the walls.
During my time at Simmons, I have taken classes like Cultural Heritage Informatics with Professor Heather Hole and Art Documentation with Professor Ann Whiteside. Outside of the classroom, I work in museum education at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. As I engage in conversations about libraries and museums at both school and work, I keep going back to my initial interactions with artwork in public libraries. My education was enriched by being able to access both text and artwork in these spaces. I was able to improve not only my reading literacy, but also my visual literacy skills. While I am exploring different paths for librarianship in my future, I wonder how I can continue to integrate these two ways of knowing into my development of public programming. I write this blog post now, without a solution to this question, only with excitement that this question is part of my journey at Simmons and at SLIS. I hope that this post serves as a reminder that libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs as we call them!) are so tightly interwoven that there is always a new angle to approach your work with.