Sign Up for E-News!

Research News

Stephen J. Bury is the Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian, Frick Art Reference Library, and the author of this blog.

Library News

	On Time Edey’s annotated copy of Maurice Rheims The Strange Life of Objects (New York, 1961) http://arcade.nyarc.org:80/record=b471740~S6 The exhibition Precision & Splendor: Clocks and Watches at The Frick Collection takes place January 23, 2013 to February 2, 2014. The Frick Art Reference Library contains the Library of Winthrop Kellogg (“Kelly”) Edey (1938-1999), whose collection of clocks and watches was bequeathed to The Frick Collection in 1999. The Library is open to the public without charge and without the need for an appointment. Edey was the grandson of the engineer Morris W. Kellogg, who had made his fortune from designing and building oil refineries. After studying at Amherst College and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, Edey led an eccentric — almost Proustian — life, getting up at 5 p.m. and, after an evening out, returning to his West 83^rd Street townhouse (preserved in its original state) and working through the night on clocks or writing in his diary. He was also a friend of Andy Warhol, who included him in his ‘The 13 Most Beautiful Boys’ film (1963-6), and of Robert Mapplethorpe. His Library consisted of 4,322 volumes,... MORE »
	Collecting Spanish Art The Frick Collection's Center for the History of Collecting was established in 2007. Its program includes a series of international symposia and it has begun to publish their proceedings. In November 2012, with the assistance of the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica and the Center for Spain in America, we launched Collecting Spanish Art: Spain's Golden Age and America's Gilded Age, edited by Inge Reist and José Luis Colomer. It contains revised presentations from the 21-22 November 2008 symposium, including ones by The Frick Collection Senior Curator, Susan Grace Galassi, on Henry Clay Frick, and by Ellen Prokop, Associate Photoarchivist in the Frick Art Reference Library, on Isabella Stewart Gardner's Spanish Cloister. The book focuses on the period 1870-1930, when Spanish art generated great excitement in the USA: some of America's greatest collectors, such as Isabella Stewart Gardner, Henry Clay Frick, Charles Deering, Archer Huntington, William Randolph Hearst, and Algur Hurtle Meadows, turned to the art of Spain to expand their art collections. The authors examine why and how this happened, analyzing the formation of the taste for Spanish art which grew out of travel and visits to world fairs, such as the Centennial International Exhibition, Philadelphia (1876) and the Columbian World Fair in Chicago... MORE »
	Web-based Research Resources There are many wonderful free Web-based research resources for the study of art history, but how do we know how to find them or if they are reliable? For the last few years, staff at the Frick Art Reference Library have been selecting, evaluating, and cataloging such Web sites. They are available in the library catalog, FRESCO, and are also listed in the Electronic Resources Finder under broad subject headings. A recent example is "British Artists' Suppliers, 1650-1950." This is a resource put together by the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), London, under the editorship of Jacob Simon. It is based on trade directories, suppliers' catalogs, and advertisements, as well as diaries and other biographical sources such as the recently released 1911 Census records. It is constantly evolving and is hosted by a reliable and trusted organization. I came across this useful resource when answering an inquiry from the National Numismatic Collection, Washington, D.C. about a sketchbook it owns by George T. Morgan, the designer of the Morgan Dollar. On the inside cover of the sketchbook is a small green sticker which reads "E. Norton's Artists'... MORE »
	A New Acquisition The Frick Art Reference Library recently acquired a three volume, complete run of 'Le DA COSTA Encyclopédique', published in Paris in 1947-8. It is a late Surrealist review associated with the Acéphale wing of Surrealism, a secret society formed by Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois, André Masson, etc. The first issue of this mock encyclopedia is confusingly labled Fascicle VII, Volume II and it begins mid-word ('-festations'), mid-sentence. Its contributors are anonymous. The two following issues have a different title, 'Le memento universel Da Costa': these are in a smaller format and the articles are 'signed'. The review was edited by the Swiss sculptor Isabelle Waldberg (1911-1990) and the writer Robert Lebel (1901-1986). Lebel had met Marcel Duchamp in New York in 1936 and later published the first Duchamp catalogue raisonné. It seems Duchamp helped design the... MORE »
	Getty Research Portal The Frick Art Reference Library is one of the participants in the new Getty Research Portal. The Getty Research Institute is spearheading this international collaboration with libraries that are digitizing art history books in order to make their resources accessible to a larger audience. Initial contributors include the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, the Biblioteca de la Universidad de Málaga, the Frick Art Reference Library, the Getty Research Institute, the Heidelberg University Library, the Institut national d'histoire de l'art, members of the New York Art Resources Consortium, and the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This collaborative project will continue to grow through contributions.
	Denise Allen Wins AAMC Award Frick Curator Denise Allen, along with fellow curators, won the 2011 award for Outstanding Small Exhibition (based on square footage: no more than 2,000 square feet) for Antico: The Golden Age of Renaissance Bronzes. The exhibition was curated by Eleonora Luciano, associate curator of sculpture, National Gallery of Art, in collaboration with Denise Allen, curator of Italian sculpture, The Frick Collection, New York, and Claudia Kryza-Gersch, Curator of the Kunstkammer, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The award was given by the AAMC (Association of Art Museum Curators) at the Annual Awards for Excellence.
	Colin B. Bailey Wins AAMC Award Fragonard’s Progress of Love at The Frick Collection, written by Colin B. Bailey, was awarded the Outstanding Catalogue based on a Permanent Collection by the the AAMC (Association of Art Museum Curators) at the Annual Awards for Excellence.
	News from the Photoarchive The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) published a feature article on the Photoarchive by Amy Lifson, "All the Art: The Records Division at the Frick" in the March/April 2012 issue of Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
	Is There a Portrait in Your Past? The NEH Division of Preservation and Access has published an online article about our two consecutive NEH projects to digitize the Frick Library negatives on its new website. Written by Mary Downs, Senior Program Officer, it is titled "Is there a Portrait in Your Past? Frick Art Reference Library Records Go Online."
	NEH Grants for Photoarchive The Frick Collection received two NEH grants totaling $648,900 to digitize and make accessible thirty thousand endangered negatives in the Frick Art Reference Library's Photoarchive, all of them made between 1922 and 1967 from art in private homes and small public collections throughout the United States. This portrait of Mrs. Daniel Williams (Jane Oldman) is one example of the images in this collection. The pastel drawing, by an unknown 18th century artist, was photographed by a Frick Art Reference Library photographer in 1955 in the home of Helen Cresswell Ellwanger, Rochester, New York.