Established | 1920 |
---|---|
Location | 10 East 71st Street, New York, NY 10021 (United States) |
Coordinates | 40°46′16″N73°58′02″W / 40.77118°N 73.96735°W |
Type | Library |
Manager | Stephen J. Bury (Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian) |
Director | Ian Wardropper (Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Director) |
Architect | John Russell Pope |
Website | http://www.frick.org/research/library |
The Frick Art Reference Library is the research arm of the Frick Collection. It is typically located at 10 East 71st Street (between Madison and Fifth Avenue) on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. [1] As of 2021 [update] , the library's reference services have temporarily relocated to 945 Madison Avenue. [2]
The library, founded in 1920, offers public access to materials on the study of art and art history in the Western tradition from the fourth to the mid-twentieth century. It is open to visitors 16 years of age or older and serves the greater art and art history research community through its membership in the New York Art Resources Consortium (which also includes the libraries of the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art).
Within the library is the Center for the History of Collecting—a research organization that supports the study of the formation of collections of fine and decorative arts, both public and private, from colonial times to the present through its fellowships, symposia, and publications.
Helen Clay Frick founded the library in 1920 as a memorial to her father, Henry Clay Frick, who died in 1919. Its first home was the bowling alley of the Frick residence, which is now The Frick Collection. In 1924, the library was relocated from the bowling alley to a one-story building at 6 East 71st Street, designed by the architecture firm, Carrère and Hastings. The library opened to the public in its current building on January 14, 1935.
The collections held at the Frick Art Reference Library focus on art of the Western tradition from the 4th century to the mid-20th century, and chiefly include information about paintings, drawings, sculpture, prints, and illuminated manuscripts. Archival materials augment its research collections. [3] The library holds more than 228,000 monograph and 3,300 periodical titles. The collection includes several highlights: an auction catalog collection that contains approximately 90,000 items; the Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive which holds more than 1.2 million images including photographs and clippings of works of art; and the electronic resources collection which consists of more than 2,000 subscription databases and e-journals, as well as e-books.
In 2007, the library established its Center for the History of Collecting. It operates with the goal of encouraging and sustaining research on the development of public and private art collections in Europe and the United States, from the early modern period to the present. [4] [5] [6]
The center supports a broad range of intellectual initiatives; [7] it organizes and hosts a regular calendar of symposia, specialist lectures, and study days, and it contributes to undergraduate and graduate seminars taught in collaboration with local colleges. It also offers long and short term fellowships in the history of collecting, which attract scholars researching diverse aspects of cultural history. In addition, the center created and continues to expand a major digital archive of art collectors and dealers, and it is collaborating on the creation of software that will aid in the study of visual history. The center has an active publications program and awards a biennial book prize for excellent contributions to the history of collecting in America.
From its inception under the leadership of founding director Inge Reist, the center has had an advisory committee consisting of academics, collectors, librarians, archivists, and curators. In 2014, a Fellows Committee was introduced to garner financial support and to gather a dedicated community of individuals interested in engaging with collecting practices, especially through visits to the homes of private collectors.
Between 2007 and 2015, the center organized the following symposia on the history of collecting: [8]
The center has an active publication program, issuing books that draw on the scholarship presented in the symposia. Many of these have been published in association with Pennsylvania State University Press as volumes of The Frick Collection Studies on the History of Art Collecting in America. Titles include:
The center also organizes special events such as movie showings and lectures by important scholars, artists, and collectors. For instance, in 2013, the center presented a lecture by artist and author Edmund de Waal, and in 2014, it hosted a conversation between Sir David Cannadine, Lord Rothschild, and Duke of Devonshire. [22]
The center regularly collaborates with academic institutions, including Barnard College, Columbia University, and New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, to offer graduate and undergraduate seminars and graduate workshops on the history of collecting. Alongside local museums, it also organizes and participates in study days that contextualize major museum exhibitions within the history of collecting. [23] In addition, it facilitates oral and video histories of dealers and collectors who have helped to shape American collecting through the twentieth century. [24] In this effort, it has partnered with the Archives of American Art on a two-year project to produce a series of oral histories of collectors. [25] [26]
The center maintains an archives directory, [27] which is a growing index of collectors, dealers, auction houses and galleries, presented with historical notes and with the locations of their archival materials. [28] In 2011, the Art Libraries Society of North America awarded the archives directory its annual Worldwide Books Award for Electronic Resources, which recognizes achievements in digital librarianship or in curating visual resources. [29] [30] The center is also currently collaborating with scholars at the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering to develop a digital platform that will facilitate the storage, comparison, and manipulation of digital images.
Each year, the center grants a total of six short-term and long-term fellowships to pre- and post-doctoral scholars focusing on the history of collecting. It also awards a biennial book prize for a distinguished publication on the history of collecting in America. [31] The book prize honorees include:
The position of chief librarian has been known as the Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian since 1990. [34] There have been seven chief librarians of the Frick Art Reference Library:
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Henry Clay Frick was an American industrialist, financier, and art patron. He founded the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing company, was chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company and played a major role in the formation of the giant U.S. Steel manufacturing concern. He had extensive real estate holdings in Pittsburgh and throughout the state of Pennsylvania. He later built the Neoclassical Frick Mansion in Manhattan, and upon his death donated his extensive collection of old master paintings and fine furniture to create the celebrated Frick Collection and art museum. However, as a founding member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, he was also in large part responsible for the alterations to the South Fork Dam that caused its failure, leading to the catastrophic Johnstown Flood. His vehement opposition to unions also caused violent conflict, most notably in the Homestead Strike.
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The Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive is a study collection of more than one million photographic reproductions of works of art from the fourth to the mid-twentieth century by over 40,000 artists trained in the Western tradition located in the Frick Art Reference Library on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was founded in 1920 by Helen Clay Frick, the daughter of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, to facilitate object-oriented research. The documentation it offers records the essential elements of the biography of the work of art: the artist, title, present owner, as well as historical information such as changes of attribution, ownership and condition, all of which are essential for the study of the history of art.
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Jonathan Mayer Brown was an American art historian, known for his work on Spanish art, particularly Diego Velázquez. He was Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts at New York University.
Winthrop Kellogg "Kelly" Edey (1938–1999) was a noted collector and horologist who lived in Manhattan. His well-regarded collection of timepieces is now in the Frick Collection. Edey is the subject of several Screen Tests by Andy Warhol and early Screen Tests likely were filmed at his Manhattan townhouse.
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Stephen John Bury is an English art historian and the Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian of the Frick Art Reference Library in New York City. He is known for his scholarship on artists' books, although his research interests also include the literature of art, the impact of the digital on the future of humanities, and the use of the past in the project of modernism.
Catherine Ruth Savord was a librarian and the author of several books and articles on library work. She served as president of the Special Libraries Association, the first Chief Librarian of the Frick Art Reference Library, and the head special librarian of Council on Foreign Relations.
Ethelwyn Manning was the second Chief Librarian of the Frick Art Reference Library. During World War II, she assisted the Committee of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) on Protection of Cultural Treasures in War Areas, later known as the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFAA).
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Arthur Joseph Sulley was a London-based art dealer best known for selling Dutch Old Master paintings, including the record-setting Rembrandt van Rijn's The Mill.
Helen Sanger served as the fifth chief librarian of the Frick Art Reference Library and the institution's first Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian, a position inaugurated in 1990.
Patricia J. Barnett served as the sixth Chief Librarian and second Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian of the Frick Art Reference Library.
James Alastair Stourton, is a British art historian and a former chairman of Sotheby's UK.