prokop's blog

One of the most popular series completed by the American illustrator Vernon Howe Bailey was his "Intimate Sketches of New York," which records the city during a period of dramatic growth — and change.

Lost or destroyed paintings are perhaps the most painful reminder of the importance of photoarchives and similar repositories of images and accompanying metadata. An unfortunate example is this portrait of a young bride.

Beginning in 1925, Helen Clay Frick hired the Italian photographers Mario Sansoni and Oreste Nesti to traverse Italy documenting in situ sculptures, paintings, and frescoes that other firms such as Anderson, Alinari, and Brogi had neglected to capture. On several occasions, staff of the Frick Art Reference Library requested photography of objects specifically related to works in The Frick Collection. See more at frick.org/blogs/photoarchive/analog_facial_recognition

The Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive recently received a $25,000 grant from the Kress Foundation to support the creation of a toolkit that will perform computer vision analysis on digitized art historical photo archives. This toolkit will be a groundbreaking application of technology that will transform the way photo archives are used.

The third and final entry in a series of three blog posts focusing on conservation "interventions" as recorded in the holdings of the Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive is this mysterious devotional image in the church of San Martino in Velletri, Italy.

The second of a series of blog entries focusing on conservation “interventions” as recorded in the holdings of the Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive is this problematic portrait of an engaging young woman, her son, and their serene spaniel attributed to Sir William Beechey (1753–1839).

The first in a series of blog entries focusing on conservation “interventions” as recorded in the holdings of the Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive is this elegant portrait of Mrs. William Bedlow Crosby attributed to Eliab Metcalf (1785‒1834), which underwent substantial restoration before 1940.

The Photoarchive recently received a gift of three reproductions of portraits of Brooklyn’s Bannard family, including a charming group portrait of the five Bannard children.

In 1956, Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, traveled to Sansepolcro, Italy, to study and photograph works by Piero della Francesca (ca. 1415–1492), including a recently discovered fresco in the church of Santa Chiara (formerly Sant’Agostino).