It was founded in 1754 as part of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and has been located at Charlottenborg's Nyhavn Wing in Copenhagen.

The Danish National Art Library has the largest Nordic collection of art-historical literature (over 300.000 volumes).

The collection of architectural drawings consists approximately 300,000 items dating covering the period from the mid16th century until the present day.

The library collects renderings from Danish architects, both realized and unrealized, measurings of national and foreign architecture, drawings from the architectural school and travel sketches.

The library has a reading room in its main branch at Nyhavn 2 in central Copenhagen.