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Points of View: The Power of Art Journalism
If
newspapers are the first draft of history, it follows that art journals
are the first draft of art history. With more than 2,500 journals
covering topics ranging from practical advice on design trends to
loftier grapplings with aesthetics, the periodical collection of
the Frick Art Reference Library captures the interest of specialists
in all fields of the arts.
Many of the articles
in these journals are indexed in the Library’s world-renowned
Frick Art Reference Library Original Index to Art Periodicals, which
dissects the content of journals dating back to the mid-nineteenth
century, many of which are uniquely available at the Frick.
Complementing this extraordinary, but still conventional,
collection of art periodicals are the Frick’s special collections
of testimonials of art critics. These include the personal scrapbooks
of turn-of-the-twentieth-century art critic Royal Cortissoz and
the papers and manuscripts of his arch rival Sadakichi Hartmann.
At the Frick, art reviews were tipped into bound copies of exhibition and auction catalogues or filed with images in the Photoarchive. Today these contemporary commentaries evoke reactions to displays that might otherwise have been lost.
Themes explored in this exhibition include:
- Artists, Critics, and Curators
- Holocaust / Looting
- Exposure / Controversy
- Caricature
- Critical Rivalries
- Reflections of Society
- Publicity
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