prokop's blog

From 1931 to 1935, Alfred Cook, a footman to the Frick family, documented the transformation of the Frick’s Gilded Age mansion into a public art gallery and research center in a series of evocative “progress photographs.”

The Artificial Intelligence revolution is underway and how we as a society are interacting with images is changing drastically in response. Computer vision technology is increasingly becoming the standard vehicle through which we navigate the visual world on our devices.

Photoarchive staff was involved in the publication of a special issue of The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy: “Re-viewing Digital Technologies and Art History."

Scholars celebrate photoarchives for providing access to little-known works of art housed in private collections or in circulation on the art market. A feature of photoarchives that is less often appreciated, however, is how comprehensively they document famous works of art on public view.

The story of the "overzealous" restoration of a family portrait as related by the painting's current owner illustrates how crucial this type of personal information is to the documentation of the Photoarchive.

Perhaps one third of Photoarchive reproductions are cut from publications, including catalogs, books, newspapers, and magazines. This advertisement sheet for a painting possibly by Ralph Albert Blakelock (illustrated at left) was printed in 1942. As the sheet describes, the dealer Americana Arts is offering a landscape with teepees that might or might not be a good deal:

Although most of the Photoarchive’s 1.2 million reproductions illustrate art from just eight national schools, works from an additional forty countries and regions classified “minor schools” are also represented.

Interior of the Artist's Apartment, made sometime after 1910 by the American painter and watercolorist Walter Gay, shows a narrow view of a sitting area in Walter and his wife Matilda's Paris apartment at 11 Rue de l'Université, where the couple had moved in May 1909.

Dr. Charles A. Ryskamp (1928–2010), Director of The Frick Collection from 1987 to 1997 and, prior to that, of the Morgan Library & Museum, spent more than fifty years developing an extraordinary personal collection of European drawings. Passionate about collecting from a young age, his interest took a serious turn while he was a graduate student at Yale.

In 1943, Brooklyn artist Esta Cosgrave (née Esther Flack) (ca. 1900–1952) adopted a quirky style of painting modern-day likenesses in 18th- and 19th–century costumes and poses.