Curatorial Blog

January 16, 2019

Image Grid List View
Oil painting of St. Francis on a hillside with green rocks, hands open as he looks in awe at the sky
Mapping Provenance: Bellini's "St. Francis in the Desert"
Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert (ca. 1475–80) is one of the Frick’s most beloved works of art, but there was a time when it could not find a buyer. Explore the ups and downs of the art market through an interactive map charting the panel’s peregrinations, from quattrocento Venice to its temporary home at Frick Madison.
Woman looking at a painting of a female maid handing a letter to a seated woman in a yellow coat
Return of the Vermeers: New Insights on Three Masterworks
Freshly reinstalled at Frick Madison after their presentation in the Rijksmuseum’s landmark Vermeer exhibition, The Frick Collection’s three canvases by the “Sphinx of Delft” have divulged a few more secrets from their layered histories.
painting, Flaming June, of woman in repose in lush and vivid orange sheer garment
Leighton, Whistler, and Aestheticism
circular bronze medal with relief of woman in profile
Portrait Medals from the Scher Collection Come to the Frick

Associate Curator Aimee Ng discusses a major gift to The Frick Collection and how it dovetails beautifully with the museum’s holdings.

photo of Stephen K. Scher, along with Aimee Ng, handling medals
Heads and Tales: A Conversation with Stephen K. Scher

Stephen K. Scher, the co-curator (along with Associate Curator Aimee Ng) of the special exhibition The Pursuit of Immortality, discusses his decades-long fascination of portrait medals.

photo of plaster bust of Helen Clay Frick
Recent Acquisition: Portrait of a Lady

Margaret Iacono, Associate Research Curator, writes about a lost marble bust of Frick Art Reference founder Helen Clay Frick by American sculptor Malvina Cornell Hoffman. A plaster model of the bust, a recent gift to the museum, represents an intriguing episode in Frick family history and provides a welcome opportunity to recall the career of a fascinating artist.

A woman is seated at a table, looking back at another woman handing her a letter.
Rediscovering Vermeer’s "Mistress and Maid": The Newest Book in the Frick’s Diptych Series

Margaret Iacono, Associate Research Curator, writes about Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid, the second installment in the Frick’s Diptych book series.

photo of Portico Galley in the Frick Collection with porcelain objects
Special Exhibition: "Henry Arnhold’s Meissen Palace: Celebrating a Collector"
Decorative Arts Curator Charlotte Vignon discusses the current Meissen exhibition, honoring the late Henry H. Arnhold.
Oil painting of Sir Thomas More in a black cap and fur-lined black cloak against a green curtain
Mapping Provenance: Holbein's "Sir Thomas More"
The journey of an artwork is rarely a smooth one, and what we know about the ownership history of Holbein’s Sir Thomas More (1527) is notable for its gaps. Explore an interactive map tracing the fragmentary path of this panel from Tudor England to the second floor of Frick Madison.
Oil painting of a woman crowning a man with a flower crown in a lush green landscape
Picturing Paradise: T. S. Eliot, John Milton, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard
On May 3, 1947, the poet T. S. Eliot delivered a lecture at the Frick on John Milton’s Paradise Lost. In honor of the centenary of the publication of Eliot’s highly influential poem The Waste Land, explore the surprising connections between this famous work, Milton’s Edenic verse, and the lush forests of Fragonard’s Progress of Love.