Frick Art Reference Library


The Frick Art Reference Library is a research institution affiliated with The Frick Collection. It is located at 10 East 71st Street in New York City. The library is housed in a six-story building designed by the architect John Russell Pope.

History

founded the Frick Art Reference 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 moved 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.

Mission

The Frick Art Reference Library is open to visitors 16 years of age or older. In addition, it 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. The library established the Center for the History of Collecting in 2007. The center 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.

Collections

The collections held at the Frick Art Reference Library focus on art of the Western tradition from the fourth century to the mid twentieth century, and chiefly include information about paintings, drawings, sculpture, prints, and illuminated manuscripts. Archival materials augment its research collections. 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.

List of Chief Librarians

There have been seven Chief Librarians of the Frick Art Reference Library: