From the pyramids of Egypt to the castles of the Loire Valley, Henry Clay Frick and his family took some enviable vacations in their time. They spared no expense in their travels and enjoyed trips that often lasted for months on end. The Archives of The Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library recently posted photograph albums from three of these trips in the Frick Digital Image Archive. The albums document travels in 1905, 1909, and 1912, and include views of France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. They were scanned by the Library’s Digital Imaging Lab, both as a means to capture and preserve their content, and as a way of providing greater access to these unique resources.

Every day at the library reference desk I look at a poster version of this chart. Ever since Alfred Barr composed it for the catalog cover of the 1936 exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art, the chart has been scrutinized, criticized, historicized, revised, and deliciously parodied.

The second phase of a two-year collaborative project to document the New York City art scene at the turn of the 20th century by digitizing exhibition catalogs held at the Frick Art Reference Library and the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives has been completed. The materials are now available to researchers worldwide through Arcade. Phase II of this digital collection, “Documenting the Gilded Age: New York City Exhibitions at the Turn of the 20th Century” has been made possible by a grant from the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO).

More than four years ago, at the end of 2008, MoMA and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center officially completed their 10-year affiliation process.  At that time, The Museum of Modern Art Archives received custody of the organizational records, curatorial documents, exhibition paraphernalia, and other materials of historical importance saved by the institution over four decades of groundbreaking programming. And MoMA PS1 saved a lot.

Timepieces from The Frick Collection are on display in its Portico Gallery through the beginning of 2014. Precision and Splendor: Clocks and Watches at The Frick Collection highlights eleven clocks and fourteen watches from the 1999 bequest of Winthrop Kellogg Edey, as well as five eighteenth-century French clocks on loan from Horace Wood Brock. Represented in the exhibition are European timepieces from the Renaissance to the early nineteenth century.

This holiday season, the Brooklyn Museum Library is pleased have one of its collections channeled through the holiday window display of Henri Bendel at 721 5^th Ave. (at 56^th St.).  The display features mannequins wearing garments inspired by the Bendel Fashion Sketch Collection, held in the Brooklyn Museum Library’s Special Collections. 

Part of my job as an intern at the Frick Art Reference Library this past summer entailed looking through the periodicals collection—more specifically, assessing the condition of old magazines, journals, and newspapers. After examining dozens of publications, I concluded that nothing is more telling of a time or generation than the advertisements, headlines, editorial opinions, and photographs contained within their pages, including the documenting of artists and artworks through text and images.

The fall has been a whirlwind of activities related to the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition entitled Materializing "Six Years": Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art that opened here on September 14^th and will continue into mid-February. The exhibition is devoted to examining the defining impact Lucy R. Lippard’s groundbreaking book Six Years had on the emergent conceptual art movement.