Staff Favorites

November 30, 2020

This [painting] annihilates time as far as poor mortals may. —William Carlos Williams on Titian’s Portrait of a Man in a Red Hat

Staff Favorites is a series of personal reflections by Frick staff members about works of art in the permanent collection. In January 2021, the Frick—in association with DelMonico Books/D.A.P. New York—published a collection of texts in a similar vein by prominent artists, writers, and other cultural figures, each sharing how a work of art at the museum has moved or inspired them. Titled The Sleeve Should Be Illegal & Other Reflections on Art at the Frick, the anthology is made possible by The Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.

orchanian's blog

Staff Favorites: Cave Dweller
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.”
Staff Favorites: A Painter, Painted
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.
Staff Favorites: Northern Baroque 400
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.”
Staff Favorites: Monster Slayer
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.
Staff Favorites: Forging My Way
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.
Staff Favorites: I Thought That Guy Looked Familiar
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.
Staff Favorites: A Blind Date at the Frick
Monica Sands, Sales Associate, Retail and Visitor Services, imagines her parents stopping to look at Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl during a blind date at The Frick Collection in the mid-1950s.
Staff Favorites: From Comics to the Dutch Golden Age
Tommy Mishima, Museum Shop Inventory Coordinator, recalls seeing Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait in a children’s encyclopedia when he was eight years old. Ten years later, he came face-to-face with the painting for the first time.