Reading List: Staff Picks by Anthony Redding

Hi, I’m Anthony! I work at the Frick Art Research Library as Storage and Retrieval Coordinator, managing storage for the library’s vast collections and overseeing the delivery of books, periodicals, catalogs, and other materials to our reading room for library users to consult. Recently, I celebrated my fortieth year working for this outstanding institution.

When I am not working, I enjoy physical fitness, playing and listening to music, reading, cooking, acting, and learning new things. Read more about me in my Rapid-Fire Q&A.

Below, I am sharing my favorite books from the Frick Art Research Library’s collections. Plan a visit to our reading room to explore these titles and more!

1. The Religious Art of Pablo Picasso

By Jane Daggett Dillenberger and John Handley (2014)

Being a religious man myself, I was interested in Picasso’s thoughts and works on the subject. This book goes into some of the drawings and sculptures he did. For a bonus, there’s a self-portrait of Picasso with hair (personally I had never seen Picasso with hair until I encountered this book!). Picasso to me is what Prince was to music. They both were very prolific, innovative, and way ahead of their times.

2. Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power

Edited by Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley (2017)

When I think of Black power in art, this is one of the books I recommend. This volume—published in connection with an exhibition organized by Tate Modern in collaboration with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and The Broad—features artists such as Roy DeCarava, Gerald Williams, Timothy Washington, Dawoud Bey, and Barkley Hendricks. I find their work to be very encouraging and inspirational, especially Hendricks, whose work is featured on the cover. I was so happy to see his exhibition, Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick (2023–24), during our time at Frick Madison.

3. Cézanne’s Gravity

By Carol Armstrong (2018)

This beautiful book offers a visual biography of Cézanne, an extremely influential late nineteenth-century artist who gave rise to the development of many artists and art movements in the following century, notably Cubism.

4. The Bloomsbury Cookbook: Recipes for Life, Love and Art

By Jans Ondaatje Rolls (2014)

I love to cook and I’m pretty good at it, if I do say so myself. So I was wonderfully surprised when I found out that our library collections include cookbooks and books related to cooking. I picked this selection because of the artwork and recipes. My favorite work of art featured is Vanessa Bell’s Oranges and Lemons (below), paired with a recipe for pork chops with Tunisian citrus.

5. Renoir: The Body, The Senses

Edited by Esther Bell and George T. M. Shackelford (2019)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir is another artist whose work always catches my eye. The art collection here at The Frick Collection includes one captivating painting by Renoir, titled La Promenade. This book—which accompanied an exhibition at the Clark Art Institute and Kimbell Art Museum—explores another side of the artist’s work: his depiction of the nude body.

6. Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires

Edited by Julie Crooks and Andrea Andersson (2018)

This book from the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, focuses on New York–based artist Mickalene Thomas’s exuberant collage paintings, time-based media, silk-screened works, and photographs featuring portraits of Black women. She is one of my new favorite artists.

7. Black American Portraits

Edited by Christine Y. Kim and Myrtle Elizabeth Andrews (2023)

I love the portraits in this catalogue, published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I suggest taking a look at these can't-miss portraits: Renee Cox’s The Signing (shown below) and Charles White’s I Have a Dream.

8. Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys

By Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) and Alicia Keys, with Kimberli Gant (2024)

This entire book, published to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Brooklyn Museum, really excites me! My colleagues and I in the Access Department of the Frick Art Research Library had the pleasure of seeing this show during our visit to the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives, in 2024.

Rapid-Fire Q&A with Anthony

Fiction or nonfiction?

Fiction

Print or e-books?

Print

Reading or audiobooks?

Reading

Iced or hot drinks?

A little bit of both!

Favorite season?

Summer

Favorite library or archive (besides the Frick)?

The New York Public Library

Favorite memory from your forty years at the Frick?

The Barkley Hendricks and Picasso exhibitions

Most interesting item from the collections you've pulled for a library researcher?

Our William Blake artist file, which includes seven boxes of photographs, reproductions, and negatives of works by the British artist and visionary

Advice for aspiring library workers?

Read a lot of books! They expand your imagination and knowledge. Libraries are the fuel that feeds and drives that knowledge. They can be fun and inspirational.

All photos by Joseph Coscia Jr., The Frick Collection