Frick Art Research Library

Archival photo of a painting of a group of young girls eating at a school lunch table

Data Discoveries: Completing the Picture of Artists in the Photoarchive

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).

Color photograph of Helen Sanger, who died in July 2020.

Remembering Helen Sanger, Frick’s First Mellon Chief Librarian

Helen Sanger (1923–2020), the Frick Art Reference Library’s first Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian, passed away in July at the age of 96. Her forty-seven-year career at the library shaped the institution profoundly, and her legacy lives on in many areas of its initiatives.

Black and white photograph of the Frick Art Reference Library Reading Room taken in 1935 showing empty communal tables with lamps and chairs

The Frick’s Other Collection: The 70th Anniversary of The Frick Art Reference Library

December 11, 1990 to March 24, 1991

The creation, growth, and present-day role of The Frick Art Reference Library was the focus of a special exhibition marking the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the institution. The first section of the exhibition surveyed the Library's history from its foundation to the present.

Frick Art Research Library

The Frick Art Reference Library—renamed in 2024 to the Frick Art Research Library— was founded in 1920 by Helen Clay Frick (1888-1984) as a memorial to her father, the industrialist and art collector Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919). Responding to the interest shown by Henry Clay Frick in learning more about the artists whose works he had purchased, Helen Clay Frick conducted research on her father's behalf. The data and documents that she shared with him would provide the nucleus for the Frick Art Research Library.