purdy's blog

A massive banner discovered during preparations for the museum’s temporary move to Frick Madison, was the key to finally identify a group of uncaptioned photographs in the Frick Archives.

In this month’s reading list from the Frick Art Reference Library, Eugenie Fortier, Acting Storage and Retrieval Lead, explores the 171-year tradition of World’s Fairs, to coincide with the current World Expo in Dubai. Recommended books delve into the fairs’ remarkable presentations of art, technology, and global culture.

Giulio Dalvit, Assistant Curator of Sculpture, explores connections between Francisco de Goya’s painting The Forge and Pietro Tacca’s bronze statue Nessus and Deianira, made centuries apart and today found in adjacent galleries at Frick Madison. The statue is a remarkable achievement of the same type of labor depicted in Goya’s canvas, both employing metalwork as a powerful storytelling device.

Reproductions in the Frick’s Photoarchive allow us to piece together a full visual history of Raphael’s Baronci Altarpiece, the first recorded commission of the High Renaissance master. The altarpiece—today found only in fragments—sat peacefully for nearly three hundred years until a devastating earthquake and looting by Napoleon changed its fate permanently.

In conjunction with the Olympic Winter Games and Super Bowl LVI, the Library tackles the world of sports in its latest recommended reading list. 

What happens to a work of art when it is rejected by its patron? Explore an interactive map to discover how the canvases in Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Progress of Love series were scorned by a royal mistress, rolled up for twenty years in the Louvre, and more than tripled in number on their way from eighteenth-century France to the fourth floor of Frick Madison.

Surprising connections are waiting to be discovered at Frick Madison. In the debut post of “Middle Ground,” explore unexpected links between Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert and Marcel Breuer’s iconic trapezoidal window, a transcendent juxtaposition on the third floor of the museum’s temporary home.

The Frick Art Reference Library’s collection is wide ranging—and constantly evolving. Mary Seem, Acquisitions Lead, offers a sample of the recent book acquisitions of the past year, which enrich and expand on a variety of fascinating topics represented in the library’s holdings.

The journey of an artwork is rarely a smooth one, and what we know about the ownership history of Holbein’s Sir Thomas More (1527) is notable for its gaps. Explore an interactive map tracing the fragmentary path of this panel from Tudor England to the second floor of Frick Madison.

Celebrate Halloween with a list of recommended reads from the Frick Art Reference Library! Available for consultation by appointment in the library’s reading room, these books explore scholarship on spooky themes associated with the holiday, from gothic horror to Surrealism, witches, and the supernatural.