Named for Clarence Bloodworth Hanson Jr., former publisher of The Birmingham News and a Birmingham Museum of Art board member for 24 years, the Museum’s library is one of the most comprehensive art research libraries in the southeastern U.S. Holdings include a broad range of materials including general art reference works, auction catalogues, artists’ files, periodicals, indexes, exhibition catalogs, and databases. The Chellis Wedgwood Library, the largest and most comprehensive special collection in the world related to Josiah Wedgwood and his manufactures, along with the Beeson rare book holdings, make this the U.S. center for the study of Wedgwood. Among these holdings are letters from John Flaxman and Benjamin West, and Sir William Hamilton’s Collection of Engravings from Antique Vases, known as the Hamilton Folios, the first European color-plate books.