Discoveries in Photoarchive

Get to know the friendly faces of the Frick Art Reference Library in our new series, Staff Picks! In the first installment, Hannah Fountain, Discovery Lead, shares a selection of her favorite items from the library’s collection—including books on modernism, craft, and a Grant Wood catalogue with a corn-cob chandelier. Plus, discover Hannah’s answers to our rapid-fire Q&A.

The second of a series of blog entries focusing on conservation “interventions” as recorded in the holdings of the Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive is this problematic portrait of an engaging young woman, her son, and their serene spaniel attributed to Sir William Beechey (1753–1839).

Celebrate the recent opening of Frick Madison by exploring works on view at our temporary new home through past staff-written articles from the Members’ Magazine. Learn about the frames in the collection, conservation discoveries about a rare bronze, Frick’s first Vermeer acquisition, and much more. Past issues of the magazine—published three times a year as a benefit for members—can be browsed online in their entirety.

In celebration of National Native American Heritage Month this November, the Frick Art Reference Library offers a recommended reading list of books that pay tribute to the ample contributions Native Americans have made to the rich history of this country and its art, from centuries ago through to the present day.

Beginning in 1925, Helen Clay Frick hired the Italian photographers Mario Sansoni and Oreste Nesti to traverse Italy documenting in situ sculptures, paintings, and frescoes that other firms such as Anderson, Alinari, and Brogi had neglected to capture. On several occasions, staff of the Frick Art Reference Library requested photography of objects specifically related to works in The Frick Collection. See more at frick.org/blogs/photoarchive/analog_facial_recognition

Emma Claire Marvin, a spring/summer 2021 practicum student and content consultant in the Frick Art Reference Library, explains her work on the library’s ongoing Wikidata project. The project enhances the online discoverability of artists represented in the Photoarchive, and Emma Claire describes her research that contributed to the creation of a brand-new Wikidata “item” for lesser-known French artist Marie Perrier (1864–1941).

Show your love for libraries! During National Library Lovers’ Month, browse a recommended reading list from the Frick Art Reference Library exploring reading, books, and the spaces that house them as they appear throughout art history.

Photoarchive intern Alexandra Provo and her collaborator Diana Sapanaro discuss their projects to use visualization technologies and Python scripts to make one of the Library's research tools, Spanish Artists from the Fourth to the Twentieth Century: A Critical Dictionary, accessible to the public in new ways.

The Camposanto complex in Pisa, Italy, housed some of the most significant fresco paintings from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—until their near destruction during World War II. The Frick Art Reference Library’s Photoarchive contains images from before the damage and prior to extensive restoration efforts, providing a window into a crucial period in the site’s long history.

In this installment of our series looking back at the past century of the Frick Art Reference Library through significant objects in its collections, Stephen J. Bury, Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian, explores three items connected to the career of the Futurist poet and artist Vladimir Mayakovsky and his involvement in the turbulent politics of early twentieth-century Russia.