Blogs

In celebration of The Frick Collection’s opening to the public eighty-seven years ago, Archivist Julie Ludwig explores her research into a handbook of Henry Clay Frick’s painting collection from 1916. The handbook was distributed among Frick’s friends, associates, and visitors to his galleries, and today it gives us valuable insight into the arrangement of works of art at 1 East 70th Street while it was still a private residence.

As we continue celebrating the centennial of the Frick Art Reference Library, Stephen J. Bury, Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian, explores an unexpected strength of the library’s collections: materials on modern art. In this post, Stephen discusses a sample of the library’s exhibition catalogs from the Surrealist movement, which began in Paris in 1924, the same year the Frick Art Reference Library opened its first dedicated building.

In celebration of Johannes Vermeer’s 390th birthday this month, explore a recommended reading list from the Frick Art Reference Library on the artist’s life and work by Eugénie Fortier, Acting Storage and Retrieval Lead. All the resources on this list were published within the last two decades, speaking to the Dutch artist’s continuing legacy nearly four hundred years later.

The power of portraiture is particularly potent on the fourth floor of Frick Madison. Considering two seemingly unrelated likenesses on view—Reynolds’s General John Burgoyne and Chinard’s Étienne Vincent de Margnolas—Rebecca Leonard, Curatorial Assistant, examines the works’ uneasy balance between glory and tragedy, epitomizing portraiture’s poignant reflection of the human condition.

Christopher Snow Hopkins, Associate Editor, examines the appearance of the Frick’s King Philip IV of Spain by Diego Velázquez in the classic film The Maltese Falcon—a tantalizing cameo that has not been commented upon before.

This summer, The Frick Collection hosted a talented and enthusiastic group of interns across eight museum and library departments. In this post, read the interns’ lively reflections on their experiences at the Frick.

Discover a newly digitized book of engravings of views of Paris from the 1780s, the product of a collaborative project by the four summer 2022 interns at the Frick Art Reference Library.

Celebrate Ukrainian art with a recommended reading list from the Frick Art Reference Library by Eugénie Fortier, Acting Storage and Retrieval Lead. Peruse these publications to discover a wide breadth of art styles and media and to learn how artists from Ukraine have explored their home country’s history and culture through time.

In celebration of Disability Pride Month, Michelle McCarthy-Behler, Reference Lead at the Frick Art Reference Library, presents a recommended reading list of monographs and exhibition catalogs that highlight people with disabilities throughout art history.

As we continue to celebrate the Frick Art Reference Library’s one-hundredth anniversary, Kerri A. Pfister, Photoarchivist, guides us through the library’s collections of reproductions, which have enabled the widespread study of art history. From printmaking to photography to digital imagery, the library has offered cutting-edge technologies through the ages to fulfill its mission of making art resources accessible to the public. Objects featured in this post are part of the celebratory publication One Hundred Objects in the Frick Art Reference Library, available in the Frick’s shop.