January 27, 2023
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February 25, 2021
Take a trip through the centuries in the latest episode of the Frick Art Reference Library’s anniversary series. In this video, Stephen J. Bury, Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian, explores the most famous political cartoon by the English caricaturist James Gillray. The 1805 print satirizes the news of the day, as Emperor Napoleon and British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger carve up the world in the form of a Christmas plum pudding. The print exemplifies the range of the library’s holdings, particularly its vast works on paper collection.
In the 1930s, how did librarians communicate across the nine stories of the Frick Art Reference Library’s building? In this episode, Stephen J. Bury, Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian, introduces the telautograph, an innovative technology installed in the library’s original East 71st Street home. The machine allowed for handwritten notes to be transmitted from the reading room to the stacks and offices above. Used in tandem with dumbwaiters, the telautograph is an early example of the cutting-edge technology employed at the library since its founding.
Stephen J. Bury, Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian, presents a group of maps, guides, photos, and other objects related to the Frick Art Reference Library’s involvement in cultural preservation during World War II. From July 1943 to January 1944, the institution closed to the public to serve as the headquarters of the Committee on the Protection of Cultural Treasures in War Areas, part of the so-called Monuments Men program—a rare but pivotal time the library’s century-long history intersected with major world events.
The avant-garde Surrealist movement began in Paris in 1924, the same year the Frick Art Reference Library’s first dedicated building opened. In this episode of One Hundred Years at the Library, join Stephen J. Bury, Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian, for a look at two original Surrealist catalogs available for consultation in the reading room. The catalogs provide tantalizing evidence for the dramatic upheavals within the Surrealist movement and exemplify the rich objects added to the library’s collections over the past century.
Welcome and opening remarks delivered by Stephen J. Bury, Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian, Frick Art Reference Library and Louisa Wood Ruby, Head of Research, Frick Art Reference Library. This video introduces a series of lectures from the symposium 'SEARCHING THROUGH SEEING: OPTIMIZING COMPUTER VISION TECHNOLOGY FOR THE ARTS' presented by The Frick Collection and the Frick Art Reference Library on Thursday and Friday, April 12-13, 2018.
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