Staff Favorites

November 30, 2020

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This annihilates time as far as poor mortals may. —William Carlos Williams on Titian’s Portrait of a Man in a Red Hat

Staff Favorites is a series of personal reflections by Frick staff members about works of art in the permanent collection. In January 2021, the Frick—in association with DelMonico Books/D.A.P. New York—published a collection of texts in a similar vein by prominent artists, writers, and other cultural figures, each sharing how a work of art at the museum has moved or inspired them. Titled The Sleeve Should Be Illegal & Other Reflections on Art at the Frick, the anthology is made possible by The Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.

oil painting of older man in hat and yellow smock
Staff Favorites: From Comics to the Dutch Golden Age
Tommy Mishima, Museum Shop Inventory Coordinator, recalls seeing Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait in a children’s encyclopedia when he was eight years old. Ten years later, he came face-to-face with the painting for the first time.
Oil painting of three men working at an iron forge.
Staff Favorites: Forging My Way
Isabel Losada, Manager for Membership, didn’t hesitate when asked during a job interview, “What work of art best illustrates your work ethic?” Her answer: Goya’s depiction of three metalworkers engaging in intense labor.
oil painting of bearded man dressed in black with white collar
Staff Favorites: A Painter, Painted
Mikhail Shklyarevsky, Acquisitions Assistant, Frick Art Reference Library, observes that the stern countenance of the sitter in Van Dyck’s portrait of Frans Snyders is the look of a person who has gained wisdom through hardship.
Oil painting of a woman and man sitting at a table near a window
Staff Favorites: A Blind Date at the Frick
Monica Sands, Sales Associate, Retail and Visitor Services, imagines her parents stopping to look at Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl during a blind date at The Frick Collection in the mid-1950s.
sculpture of nude man with club on top of monster
Staff Favorites: Monster Slayer
Lorenzo De Los Angeles III, Reference Assistant, Frick Art Reference Library, considers the French seventeenth-century bronze Hercules and the Hydra in the context of the 1963 sci-fi flick Jason and the Argonauts.
Oil painting of St. Francis on a hillside with green rocks, hands open as he looks in awe at the sky
Staff Favorites: Cave Dweller
Christopher Snow Hopkins, Assistant Editor, looks closely at the barefoot cave dweller in Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert: “The forest was his chapel, the birds his parishioners.”
oil painting of man with white beard in pink red cloak
Staff Favorites: I Thought That Guy Looked Familiar
Liz Daly, Community Relations Manager, had an epiphany some years ago while looking at El Greco’s St. Jerome: That guy looks exactly like Samuel Beckett.
Oil painting of a woman and man sitting at a table near a window
Staff Favorites: Northern Baroque 400
Payton Goad, Executive Assistant, Frick Art Reference Library, vowed to work with Old Masters after seeing Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl when she was a senior in college: “In my eyes, nothing else could compare.”