List of museums with major collections of European prints and drawings  

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This is a list of museums or print rooms with major collections of European old master prints and drawings. This list is incomplete, and should not be regarded as a correct ranking of the major collections. Fuller information is available at print room.

One of the relatively few print rooms to exist as a separate institution (rather than as part of a larger museum or library), the Albertina (Vienna) is by general consent the world's greatest collection of Western art on paper. The Berlin Kupferstichkabinett at Kulturforum is, similarly, a major museum with an exclusive focus on prints and drawings.

1. British Museum, London, UK

   50,000 drawings, 2 million prints [1]

2. The Metropolitan Museum of Art *, New York, USA

   15,000 drawings, 1.5 million prints [2]

3. Albertina, Vienna, Austria

   50,000 drawings, 1 million prints [3] Excludes 25,000 architectural drawings

4. Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, Germany

   110,000 drawings, 500,000 prints [4]

5. State Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

   39,000 drawings, 486,000 prints [5]

6. Royal Collection, London, UK

   40,000 drawings, 150,000 prints [6] Including 600 drawings by Leonardo da Vinci

7. Uffizi, Florence, Italy

   120,000 drawings and prints [7]

8. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France

   140,500 drawings, 43,000 prints <ref>2005 Annual Report - Tableau récapitulatif de l’état d'avancement de l'informatisation des collections fin 2005, pg 185</ref> The main print collection is at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

9. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain

   9000 drawings and prints [8]

10. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK

    20,000 drawings, 180,000 prints [9]

11. Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA

    6,000 drawings, 50,000 prints [10] Includes more than 4,000 Old Master drawings and excludes over 10,000 architectural drawings [11]

12. Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK

    2,000 drawings, 500,000 prints [12] Excludes 600,000 architectural drawings, 100,000 design drawings and 10,000 British drawings [13] (V&A Collecting Plan Including Acquisition & Disposal Policy, August 2004)

13. Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA

    2,000 drawings, 40,000 prints [14]

14. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA

    11,500 drawings, 60,000 prints [15]

15. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA

    150,000 drawings and prints [16]

See also

• European museums