orchanian's blog

At Frick Madison, highlights from the collection are in conversation across media, geography, and time—often in unexpected ways. "Middle Ground" investigates surprising dialogues between pairs of works of art on view, speaking to the connections waiting to be discovered at our temporary home.

Works of art seldom rest in one place, instead migrating around the world on the winds of taste and commerce. Digital tools allow us to visualize the journeys of works in the Frick’s permanent collection like never before, mapping each stop on their trajectories through time and space.

Ars Longa is a blog series exploring photographic documentation of lost, altered, and destroyed works of art—unique and invaluable resources in the Photoarchive, the founding collection of the Frick Art Reference Library.

Christopher Snow Hopkins, Assistant Editor, looks closely at the barefoot cave dweller in Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert: “The forest was his chapel, the birds his parishioners.”

Mikhail Shklyarevsky, Acquisitions Assistant, Frick Art Reference Library, observes that the stern countenance of the sitter in Van Dyck’s portrait of Frans Snyders is the look of a person who has gained wisdom through hardship.

Payton Goad, Executive Assistant, Frick Art Reference Library, vowed to work with Old Masters after seeing Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl when she was a senior in college: “In my eyes, nothing else could compare.”

Lorenzo De Los Angeles III, Reference Assistant, Frick Art Reference Library, considers the French seventeenth-century bronze Hercules and the Hydra in the context of the 1963 sci-fi flick Jason and the Argonauts.

Isabel Losada, Manager for Membership, didn’t hesitate when asked during a job interview, “What work of art best illustrates your work ethic?” Her answer: Goya’s depiction of three metalworkers engaging in intense labor.

Liz Daly, Community Relations Manager, had an epiphany some years ago while looking at El Greco’s St. Jerome: That guy looks exactly like Samuel Beckett.