New York has always been a haven for lovers of both art and books. Like the rest of the ever-consolidating book business, art bookstores have taken a hit in recent years. Just this past year, several shops have vanished. Gone are OAN, which for 20 years specialized in African and Oceanic books, and Archivia, a Madison Avenue outpost for decorative arts books. Hacker, a 57th street institution since the 1940s, was shuttered in June.

The situation has not been helped by the uncertain state of many of the city’s museums. Dia’s Chelsea bookstore is closed while the museum renovates, and won’t re-open until 2006. (Until then, Dia’s significant list of contemporary titles is available at diabooks.org or at a shop at the Dia Beacon branch.) The New Museum for Contemporary Art, which maintained a two-story bookstore at its former location on Broadway, will offer significantly less at their temporary Chelsea location, which opens September 18.

Other museums have virtually thrown in the towel on reading material: The Guggenheim gift shop is crammed with place mats, coffee mugs, and mobiles, and has just a few shelves devoted to art books; the Whitney maintains a small but choice selection.

Hacker is perhaps the textbook example of what has happened over the past few years. For more than 50 years, Seymour Hacker’s shop was a landmark for art enthusiasts. His customers included Delmore Schwartz, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning. “I loved going to Hacker before work, after work or during lunch,” said dealer Miles McEnery, of Ameringer & Yohe, a gallery on 57th Street, near Hacker. “I was always guaranteed to find something and could never leave without at least one book.”

Hacker was bought by the downtown used-book behemoth the Strand in 2002, after the death of Seymour Hacker. But rents have been going up in the area, according to Nancy Bass, co-own er of the Strand. While the store was still profitable, it made more sense to move the Hacker inventory – about 250,000 books – into a newly renovated floor opening in the Broadway branch of the Strand. The move is planned for September. “People were really disappointed that it had closed,” she admitted.

Such specialty stores – whether they sell books or anything else – are often only able to make it if an exceptionally dedicated proprietor is there to guide it through the lean times. Peter Kraus has run Ursus books, an art book specialist, located in the second floor of the Carlyle Hotel, since 1972. Sellers like he and Hacker didn’t get into the business to become rich. It was instead the allure of a life filled with books and book lovers that drew them into the fold.

“This is not really a business-driven thing,” said Mr. Kraus, whose spectacles and bow tie give him the air of an academic. “I tried to have all the most important books for any given artist.”

That Ursus is even still in business on high-rent Madison Avenue is something of a miracle. The shop is blessed with a sweetheart rent – vestiges of a deal set by the late art collector and bibliophile, Peter Sharp, who once owned the hotel. The hotel’s new owners tried to boot Mr. Kraus recently, hoping to install a fancy coiffeur to cater to the hotel’s well-groomed clientele. But the location was unsuitable for the plumbing required for a salon, according to Mr. Kraus – so, by a mere fluke of engineering, Ursus got to stay, at least for a time.

Mr. Kraus said the competition from booksellers on the Internet has been crippling. Web sites like amazon.com allow shoppers to buy a Mark Rothko catalogue raisonne with a few clicks and at a discount. (That book trades for around $129 on Amazon – $56 less than Ursus’s list price of $185.) The drop in sales of such popular works, Mr. Kraus said, limits his ability to stock more obscure titles. Booksellers simply can’t hold onto interesting but esoteric inventory that gathers dust.

“I can’t afford to sit around with a hundred books on French chandeliers if no one wants them,” said Mr. Kraus. Or, to pick another example, monographs and catalogs on the Spanish still-life artist, Luis Melendez – the subject of an upcoming show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The clientele for art books also has changed – not to mention the books themselves. Today, museum catalogues tend to be thick impenetrable tomes, hardly the stuff of casual reading, or even carrying. Collectors can use the Internet and the growing class of art advisors as a substitute for old-fashioned study. And even when art lovers do wander into the store, there’s no guarantee they’ll buy. “One tends to be more of a library than a bookshop,” Mr. Kraus admitted.

To stay in business, shops have had to adjust to customer demands. Requests for books on less fashionable fields – Old Master painting and Medieval art come to mind – are few. Other niche areas are hot, and booksellers are taking notice. Photography books are big sellers, and from Ursus to the Strand, these titles occupy rows of shelves in the best locations. Another category in demand is contemporary art, and these, too, get prime positioning. “If you’re not up with the John Currins of the world,” said Mr. Kraus, “you’re out of luck.”