The Frick Collection is an art museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. It was established in 1935 to preserve the art collection of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. The collection consists of 14th- to 19th-century European paintings, as well as other pieces of European fine and decorative art. It is located at the Henry Clay Frick House, a Beaux-Arts mansion designed for Henry Clay Frick. The Frick also houses the Frick Art Research Library, an art history research center established by Frick's daughter Helen Clay Frick in 1920, which contains sales catalogs, books, periodicals, and photographs.
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.
Helen Clay Frick was an American philanthropist and art collector. She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the third child of the coke and steel magnate Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) and his wife, Adelaide Howard Childs (1859–1931). Two of her siblings did not reach adulthood, and her father played favorites with his two surviving children, Childs Frick (1883–1965) and Helen. After the reading of their father's will, which favored Helen, the brother and sister were estranged for the rest of their lives.
The HBCU Library Alliance is a consortium of libraries at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Founded in 2002 by deans and directors of libraries at HBCUs, the consortium comprises over 100 member organizations. The alliance specifically represents the organizations included in the White House HBCU Initiative. In 2019 the HBCU Library Alliance entered into a national partnership with the Council on Library and Information Resources.
The Henry Clay Frick House is a mansion and museum building on Fifth Avenue, between 70th and 71st streets, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by Thomas Hastings as the residence of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick, the house contains the Frick Collection museum and the Frick Art Reference Library. The house and library building are designated as a New York City landmark and National Historic Landmark.
The New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) consists of the research libraries of three leading art museums in New York City: The Brooklyn Museum, The Frick Collection, and The Museum of Modern Art. With funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, NYARC was formed in 2006 to facilitate collaboration that results in enhanced resources for research communities. Called a groundbreaking partnership, NYARC also provides a framework for collaboration among art research libraries.
Art historical photo archives are collections of reproductions of works of art that document paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, architecture and sometimes installation photos. They are essential resource tools for the study of art history. Image collections deepen understanding of specific objects of art and the careers of individual artists as they also provide the means for a comparative approach to the study of artists’ works, national schools and period styles. The documentation that accompanies the images can also reveal patterns of art collecting, art market fluctuations and the changeable nature of public opinion. Photo archives build their collections and gather documentation for the works of art they record through purchases, gifts and photography campaigns. Information about ownership, condition, attribution, and subject identification is recorded at the time of acquisition and is frequently updated.
The Frick Art Research Library’s Photoarchive in New York is a study collection of more than 1.5 million photographic reproductions of works of art from the fourth to the mid-twentieth century. It was founded in 1920 by Helen Clay Frick to facilitate object-oriented research. Alongside the reproductions, the extensive documentation it offers is continuously updated and records details on each work of art and its history, such as changes in ownership, attribution, and condition. It contains works of art by over 40,000 artists.
The Lenox Library was a library incorporated and endowed in 1870. It was both an architectural and intellectual landmark in Gilded Age–era New York City. It was founded by bibliophile and philanthropist James Lenox, and located on Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71st Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt designed the building, which was considered one of the city's most notable buildings until its destruction in 1912.
The American Art Association was an art gallery and auction house with sales galleries, established in 1883.
The Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives holds approximately 300,000 volumes and over 3,000 linear feet of archives related to the history of the museum and its collections. The library collections comprise books, periodicals, auction catalogs, artist and institutional files as well as special collections containing photographs, sketches, artists' books, rare books and trade catalogues. The museum archives contains institutional records, curatorial correspondence, expedition reports, and other related textual and visual records dating to the founding of the institution.
Stephen John Bury is an English art historian and the Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian of the Frick Art Research 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.
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).
Virginia Purdy Bacon was an American heiress and art dealer.
Hannah Johnson Howell was the third Chief Librarian of the Frick Art Reference Library.
Mildred Steinbach was an art historian and the fourth Chief Librarian of the Frick Art Reference Library.
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.
Valley of the Yosemite is a painting by the German American painter Albert Bierstadt that was completed in 1864. Initially associated with the Hudson River School, Bierstadt rose to prominence for his paintings of the Rocky Mountains, which established him as one of the best painters of the western American landscape. His later paintings of Yosemite were also received with critical acclaim and public praise.
