Frick Art Research Library
Research library for Western art history From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Frick Art Research Library is the research arm of the Frick Collection. It is located at 10 East 71st Street (between Madison and Fifth Avenue) on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City.[1]
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| Established | 1920 |
|---|---|
| Location | 10 East 71st Street, New York, NY 10021 (United States) |
| Coordinates | 40.77118°N 73.96735°W |
| Type | Library |
| Manager | Stephen J. Bury (Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian) |
| Director | Ian Wardropper (Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Director) |
| Architect | John Russell Pope |
| Website | http://www.frick.org/library |
The library, founded in 1920, offers public access to materials on the study of art and art history in the Western tradition from the fourth to the mid-twentieth century. It is open to visitors 13 years of age or older and serves the greater art and art history research community through its membership in the New York Art Resources Consortium (which also includes the libraries of the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art).
Helen Clay Frick founded the Frick Art Reference Library—renamed in 2024 to the Frick Art Research Library—in 1920 as a memorial to her father, Henry Clay Frick,[2] who had died in 1919.[3] Its first home was the bowling alley of the Henry Clay Frick House;[4] the library's staff worked in the house's basement.[5] In 1924, the library was relocated from the bowling alley to a one-story building at 6 East 71st Street next to the Frick residence; the new structure was designed by the architecture firm of Carrère and Hastings.[6] The library opened to the public in its current building on January 14, 1935.[7]
From 2021 to 2024, the library's reference services were temporarily relocated to 945 Madison Avenue.[8]
The collections held by the Frick Art Research Library focus on art of the Western tradition from the 4th century to the mid-20th century, and chiefly include information about paintings, drawings, sculpture, prints, and illuminated manuscripts. Archival materials augment its research collections.[9] The library holds more than 228,000 monograph and 3,300 periodical titles. The collection includes several highlights: an auction catalog collection that contains approximately 90,000 items; the Frick Art Research Library Photoarchive which holds more than 1.2 million images including photographs and clippings of works of art; and the electronic resources collection which consists of more than 2,000 subscription databases and e-journals, as well as e-books.
From 2007 to 2021, the library was home to the Center for the History of Collecting. It operated with the goal of encouraging and sustaining research on the development of public and private art collections in Europe and the United States, from the early modern period to the present.[10][11][12]
The center supported a broad range of intellectual initiatives;[13] it organized and hosted a regular calendar of symposia, specialist lectures, and study days, and it contributed to undergraduate and graduate seminars taught in collaboration with local colleges. It also offered long and short term fellowships in the history of collecting, which attracted scholars researching diverse aspects of cultural history. In addition, the center created a digital archive of art collectors and dealers, and it collaborated on the creation of software that will aid in the study of visual history. The center had an active publications program and awarded a biennial book prize for excellent contributions to the history of collecting in America.
Under the leadership of founding director Inge Reist, the center had an advisory committee consisting of academics, collectors, librarians, archivists, and curators. In 2014, a Fellows Committee was introduced to garner financial support and to gather a dedicated community of individuals interested in engaging with collecting practices, especially through visits to the homes of private collectors.
Symposia, lectures, and publications
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The center organized the following symposia on the history of collecting:[14]
- May 2019 – Collecting the Uncollectible: Earth and Site-Specific Sculpture[15]
- April 2019 – When Michelangelo was Modern: The Art Market and Collecting in Italy, 1450–1650[16]
- May 2018 – 150 Years of Collecting Impressionist Art: From the Avant-Garde to the Mainstream[17]
- November 2017 – Have to Have It: Philadelphians Collect 1850-1930[18]
- May 2017 – Sculpture Collecting and Display, 1600–2000[19]
- March 2017 – Made in the USA: Collecting American Art during the Long Nineteenth Century[20]
- May 2016 – America and the Art of Flanders: Collecting Paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck, and Their Circles[21]
- March 2016 – A Demand for Drawings: Five Centuries of Collecting[22]
- May 2015 – Seen through the Collector's Lens: 150 Years of Photography[23]
- January 2015 – El Greco Comes to America: The Discovery of a Modern Old Master[24]
- May 2014 – The Americas Revealed: Collecting Colonial and Modern Latin American Art in the United States[25]
- September 2013 – Going for Baroque: Americans Collect Italian Paintings of the 17th and 18th Centuries
- March 2013 – Money for the Most Exquisite Things: Bankers and Collecting from the Medici to the Rockefellers[26]
- March 2012 – The Dragon and the Chrysanthemum: Collecting Chinese and Japanese Art in America[27][28]
- May 6, 2011 – Reflections across the Pond: British Models of Art Collecting and the American Response
- November 2010 – A Market for Merchant Princes: Collecting Italian Renaissance Paintings in America[29]
- March 2010 – The Collector's Choice: Art on Display in American Private Collections
- May 2009 – Holland's Golden Age in America: Collecting the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals
- March 2009 – The American Artist as Collector: From the Enlightenment to the Post-War Era
- November 2008 – Collecting Spanish Art: Spain's Golden Age and America's Gilded Age[30][31]
- April 2008 – Power Underestimated: American Women Art Collectors
- February- March 2008 – Turning Points: Modern Art Collecting 1913–
- May 19, 2007 – Turning Points in Old Masters Collecting, 1830– 1940
The center had an active publication program, issuing books that draw on the scholarship presented in the symposia. Many of these were published in association with Pennsylvania State University Press as volumes of The Frick Collection Studies on the History of Art Collecting in America. Titles include:
- Reist, Inge Jackson., and Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, eds. Power Underestimated: American Women Art Collectors. Venezia: Marsilio, 2011.[32]
- Reist, Inge Jackson., and José Luis Colomer, eds. Collecting Spanish Art: Spain's Golden Age and America's Gilded Age. New York: Frick Collection in Association with Centro De Estudios Europa Hispánica, Madrid, and Center for Spain in America, New York, 2012.
- Reist, Inge, ed. British Models of Art Collecting and the American Response: Reflections Across the Pond. Burlington: Ashgate, 2014.
- Quodbach, Esmée, ed. Holland's Golden Age in America: Celebrating the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014.[33][34][35]
- Reist, Inge, ed. A Market for Merchant Princes: Collecting Italian Renaissance Paintings in America. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015.
The center also organized special events such as movie showings and lectures by scholars, artists, and collectors. For instance, in 2013, the center presented a lecture by artist and author Edmund de Waal, and in 2014, it hosted a conversation between Sir David Cannadine, Lord Rothschild, and Duke of Devonshire.[36]
Collaborations
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The center collaborated with academic institutions, including Barnard College, Columbia University, and New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, to offer graduate and undergraduate seminars and graduate workshops on the history of collecting. Alongside local museums, it also organized and participated in study days that contextualize major museum exhibitions within the history of collecting.[37] In addition, it facilitated oral and video histories of dealers and collectors who have helped to shape American collecting through the twentieth century.[38] In this effort, it partnered with the Archives of American Art on a two-year project to produce a series of oral histories of collectors.[39][40]
Digital scholarship
The center published an archives directory,[41] which is still a growing index of collectors, dealers, auction houses and galleries, presented with historical notes and with the locations of their archival materials.[42] In 2011, the Art Libraries Society of North America awarded the archives directory its annual Worldwide Books Award for Electronic Resources, which recognizes achievements in digital librarianship or in curating visual resources.[43][44] The center collaborated with the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering to develop a digital platform that will facilitate the storage, comparison, and manipulation of digital images.
Prizes and fellowships
The center granted a total of six short-term and long-term fellowships to pre- and post-doctoral scholars focusing on the history of collecting. It also awarded a biennial book prize for a distinguished publication on the history of collecting in America.[45] The book prize honorees:
- 2017, Margaret K. Hofer and Roberta J. M. Olson, Making It Modern: The Folk Art Collection of Elie and Viola Nadelma, New York: New-York Historical Society in association with D Giles Limited, 2015 (Prize shared with essayists Kenneth L. Ames, Barbara Haskell, Cynthia Nadelman, and Elizabeth Stillinger)
- 2015, Janet Bishop, Cécile Debray, and Rebecca Rabinow, The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde, San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; New Haven: In association with Yale University Press, 2011 (Prize shared with essayists Isabel Alfandary, Emily Braun, Edward Burns, Claudine Grammont, Hélène Klein, Martha Lucy, Carrie Pilto, Gary Tinterow, Kate Mendillo and Robert Parker)
- 2013, Jennifer Farrell, Get There First, Decide Promptly: The Richard Brown Baker Collection of Postwar Art, New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 2011 (Prize shared with essayists Thomas Crow, Serge Guilbaut, Jan Howard, Robert Storr, and Judith Tannenbaum)
- 2011, Mary L. Levkoff, Hearst, the Collector, New York: Abrams, 2008.[46]
- 2009, Julia Meech, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Japan: The Architect's Other Passion, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001.[47]
The position of chief librarian has been known as the Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian since 1990.[48] There have been seven chief librarians of the Frick Art Research Library:
- Stephen J. Bury, 2010 to present[49]
- Patricia Barnett, 1995 to 2008[50]
- Helen Sanger, 1978 to 1994[48]
- Mildred Steinbach, 1970 to 1977
- Hannah Johnson Howell, 1947 to 1970
- Ethelwyn Manning, 1924 to 1947
- Ruth Savord, 1920 to 1924
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