The New York Public Library has acquired some 250 prints by Kiki Smith, a gift from her sister, the artist Seton Smith. The donation was announced on October 22 and joins the library's existing 30 Smith prints and 12 artist's books, giving the institution one of the most complete holdings of the artist's printed oeuvre anywhere in the United States. Seton Smith has also pledged that every future Kiki Smith print she receives will go to the library.

The works span from the 1990s to the present. The earlier material, informed by anatomical illustrations such as Gray's Anatomy, dwells on the human body — organs, blood vessels and bodily fluids rendered with unusual frankness — and belongs to a feminist practice shaped by the AIDS crisis. From the late 1990s the work turned toward folklore, mythology and religion seen through a feminist lens, according to Madeleine Viljoen, curator of the library's Prints and Spencer Collections.

The artist said she could think of no more fitting place for the works, adding that public libraries deserve to be cherished. Julie Golia, who directs the library's humanities and social sciences research collections, described the difference from a museum setting: anyone with a library card can handle the prints as study material rather than viewing them behind glass.

Smith, the daughter of sculptor Tony Smith and a Pace gallery artist, has appeared in five Venice Biennales, and her work sits in collections including the Albertina, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.