Operations

The New Rare is a London-based dealer and curatorial platform for art books, editions and printed matter, ranging from ephemeral art-world material to rare publications. It works with individual collectors alongside artists, libraries and institutions.

The archive behind the archive. The New Rare sources, acquires, places, and consigns rare books, printed matter, and documentary material related to modern and contemporary art. We work with collectors, artists, estates, libraries, and institutions seeking to sell, place, or locate material that sits between artwork, document, and object. The field extends beyond the book: correspondence, posters, invitations, manuscripts, lecture material, analog media, archival residue. Forms that do not always enter collections as artworks, yet remain central to how artists, exhibitions, and periods are produced, circulated, and understood. What appears secondary is often structurally central.

Areas of Interest: Correspondence & Letters, Posters & Printed Ephemera, Manuscripts & Papers, Lectures & Talks, Analog Media, Digital & Transferred Archives, Focused Holdings, Sourcing.

The New Rare works with the materials through which art is recorded, moved, misplaced, and understood.

Areas of Interest

Correspondence & Letters

Original letters and exchanges involving artists, curators, critics, publishers, and associated figures. Material in which relation, provenance, and context remain active.

Posters & Printed Ephemera

Exhibition posters, announcements, invitations, flyers, and pamphlets. Paper forms through which exhibitions persist, circulate, and reappear.

Manuscripts & Papers

Unpublished notes, drafts, transcripts, and working documents by artists, writers, and cultural figures. Material where thought remains visible in process.

Lectures & Talks

Printed, recorded, or transcribed material connected to moments of artistic, critical, and institutional discourse.

Analog Media

VHS, Super 8, cassette, vinyl, slides, and photographs carrying recordings, documentation, performance traces, or time-based residue.

Digital & Transferred Archives

Digitised collections, transferred media, and born-digital material where provenance, authorship, and authenticity can be clearly established.

Focused Holdings

Development of private or institutional holdings across artists, movements, and periods, with attention to coherence, relation, and historical placement.

Sourcing

Locating specific books, documents, ephemera, editions, and archival material for collectors, researchers, galleries, and institutions.

The New Rare works with the materials through which art is recorded, moved, misplaced, and understood.