Collections

The Research Center for Music Iconography houses about 12,000 reproductions of artworks showing musical instruments, portraits of performers and composers, scenes of music-making, and works inspired by music.

RCMI series

  • RCMI’s Picture Reproduction File, organized by the time period, medium, and artist, spanning the period from antiquity to 1900 (2000 images)
  • 20th-century artworks related to music (200)
  • portraits of musicians and composers (500)
  • images reproduced in calendars of Edition Peters & Bärenreiter (500)
  • facsimiles of music autographs and title pages of music editions (350)
  • images showing 18th-century ensemble performances (573)
  • reproductions of 19th-20th century art, including many works by American-Indian and African American artists (960)

Reproductions of art works housed in U.S. museums

  • Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2 images)
  • The Art Institute of Chicago (11)
  • Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (2)
  • The Cleveland Museum of Art (50)
  • The Detroit Institute of Arts (10)
  • Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1)
  • The Frick Collection, New York (35)
  • Harvard University, Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge (14)
  • Honolulu Academy of Arts (1)
  • The Huntington Library and Museum, San Marino, California (2)
  • Isabella Steward Gardner Museum, Boston (9)
  • formerly at the Kress Foundation (46)
  • M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco (1)
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (50)
  • Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida (6)
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (20 paintings + 650 prints)
  • National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (24)
  • The New-York Historical Society (9)
  • Oberlin College, Allen Memorial Art Museum (16)
  • Philadelphia Museum of Art (23)
  • Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (200 facsimiles of MSS)
  • Princeton University Art Museum (2)
  • The Springfield Art Museum (1)
  • Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford (1)
  • Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore (16)
  • Worchester Art Museum (6)
  • Yale University, Art Gallery, New Haven (9)
  • Yale University, Center for British Art, New Haven (6)

Museums outside of the United States

  • Musei Apostolici Vaticani (60 images)
  • Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (130 reproductions of drawings)

Martin Bernstein collection

  • slides prepared by Martin Bernstein (1904-1999) for his lecturing at New York University (1633)

Mary Rasmussen collection

  • slides collected by Mary Rasmussen (1904-1999), (ca. 8000)
  • reproductions of various artworks (4000)

Emanuel Winternitz collections

  • reproductions of 15th- to 18th-century (mostly Italian) works (1000)
  • reproductions of images organized by Winternitz according to about 70 topics (600)
  • Instrument Reference File
  • photographs of instruments from the Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (260)
  • photographs of Instruments shown at the Galpin Society Exhibition, Edinburgh 1964 (34)
  • photographs of instruments at the Musée des instruments de musique/Muziekinstrumentenmuseum, Bruxelles (110)
  • reproductions of art-works classified by instrument (500)

Wurlitzer-Bruck collection

  • 19th-century French caricatures (226)