Reading List: Staff Picks by Emily Stein

Hey there! I'm Emily, a Photoarchivist at the Frick Art Research Library. I work with the library’s collection of photographic reproductions of works of art from all over the world—over 1.5 million strong and growing. My favorite part of the role is looking at different artworks every day and researching their histories.

My goal is to make our analog and digital resources (check out our digitized materials in the Frick Digital Collections) more relevant and accessible, such as by composing blogs and #PhotoarchiveFind posts on The Frick Collection’s social media channels. Outside of work, I like taking walks in nature and enthusiastically watching Jeopardy! if I make it home in time.

In exploring the library’s vast collections, these are some titles that struck a chord with me. You can check them out when the reading room at our historic East 71st Street home reopens in April 2025!

1. Bernini

   Edited by Andrea Bacchi and Anna Coliva (2017)

   I visited the Galleria Borghese in Rome many years ago, before I was an art historian and before I knew what a photo archive even was. I’ll never forget how the tour guide said to approach Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne from the back, so we could see the story unfold as we walked around the sculpture. It made such an impression that my parents purchased a miniature replica for their home. How he sculpted such movement of flesh from a block of marble is out of this world. The artist’s son, also his father’s biographer, described him as a “monster of genius.”

   
2. Wayne Thiebaud

3. By John Wilmerding, with contributions by Pepe Karmel (2012)

   What makes Thiebaud’s style exceptional, to my eye, is the combination of an attention-grabbing, mood-boosting palette with rich, thick, carefully chosen lines. Throughout the painter’s long career (he lived to age 101), he walked the line between Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and a unique je ne sais quoi. The poet Wallace Stevens called him “the emperor of ice cream.” His representations of confections are a welcome reminder to treat yourself to the finer things in life...like cake.

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