Annual Report - The Frick Collection

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Report of the Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian Stephen Bury The past year has been one of progress and development for the Frick Art Reference Library. While we continue to receive accolades and financial support from those familiar with the Library’s collec- tions and resources, members of the general public (and, surprisingly, sometimes visitors to the museum) are not always aware of its vast offerings or even that it is open free of charge to all serious researchers. It has therefore become a priority to raise the Library’s profile and to increase the public’s awareness that our holdings extend beyond the documentation of the museum’s permanent collection. We are also con- stantly looking for new and interesting ways to engage future generations of researchers. To this end, members of the Library’s Public Services staff attended the museum’s Rembrandt Night and Summer Night programs to promote the Library and its activities. Library senior managers and Director Anne L. Poulet took part in the filming of an episode of the PBS television series “Great Libraries of the World,” which aired in June and is now available on DVD. The Library held its first Student Day open house, a great success that has already resulted in return- ing researchers. In addition, the New York Art Resources Consortium (nyarc)—of which the Library is a member—distributed a set of six promotional postcards. We were delighted that Bonham’s, an auction house, included the postcards in its mailing of two of its catalogs. A memory stick with nyarc’s logo, a poster, and a click-through advertisement in Artnet in May all helped to promote both nyarc and the Frick Art Reference Library. It has been a banner year for the Reading Room. Total visits reached 6,326 and 1,675 visitors were served—both an increase from last year. There were also 867 new researchers. Reference questions answered in the Reading Room and those answered by email hit 6,534 and 1,067 respectively (up 43 percent and 42 percent). There also was a 31 percent increase in visits to fresco, the Library’s online catalog. These statistics represent an increasing modernization of services and workflows across the institution. The installation of a Bookeye scan- ner enabled the delivery to researchers of photocopy orders via email. We introduced a new bar-coded membership card along with online forms for membership, reference questions, and requests for interlibrary loans and off-site materials. At the same time the Library’s senior management team turned its thoughts to the longer-term future, producing a medium- term strategy that was approved in December by the Board of Trustees. In the months that followed, much progress was made on many of the strategic priorities: for example, we completed a project that explored how to best document born-digital auction catalogues, and in February we began to look at ways to simplify workflows both within and between departments in an effort to free up resources so that new activities can be undertaken without sacrificing the quality of traditional services that our researchers continue to expect. The Photoarchive Futures Group was established to increase awareness and use of the Photoarchive. Consisting of the Library Administrator, Photoarchive senior managers, and me (with external advisers sometimes in attendance), the group is also exploring ways in which the Photoarchive should be operating in five years’ time. Photoarchive staff created Wikipedia articles about photoarchives in general and the Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive in particular. The surveying of other photoarchives around the world has begun in order to glean the best and most innovative practices. Meanwhile, we transferred 182,220 bibliographic records from the internal database into the publicly accessible Arcade catalog. Readers can now look at the provenance of these records remotely, and also correlate the results with relevant auction catalogues. There are now possibilities for genealogical research and “text mining”: for example, a search for the term “yellow fever” retrieves ten records citing portraits whose subjects died from the disease. Members of the conservation, digital lab, and photoarchive departments worked closely to complete the first phase of a National Endowment for the Humanities– funded project to digitize 15,000 negatives from the American photography campaigns sponsored by Helen Clay Frick between the 1920s and the 1960s. To complete the second phase of this project, the Frick received an additional grant of $300,000 from the NEH, Annual Report July 2010–June 2011 11
which lauded the Library’s application and posted it on its Web site as an exemplary model. We also developed a Beta Web site application that provides public access to these images and to the related Photoarchive bibliographic records. Other notable gifts during the past fiscal year included a grant of $165,000 that was awarded to the Center for the History of Collecting from the Leon Levy Foundation in support of six long-term fellowships over the next three years and a gift of $100,000 made by Janine Luke in memory of her hus- band, Trustee Mel Seiden, and in honor of Inge Reist, the Center’s Director. The Center also was the recipient of a $150,000 grant from an anonymous foundation. During the course of the year the Library staff took part in several national and international initiatives. The Book Department participated in three Library of Congress programs for cooperative cataloging, pre- publication cataloging, and the creation of authoritative standardized headings for art. (The Frick Art Reference Library was by far the largest contributor of headings to the latter.) Staff participated in meetings on the Future of Art Bibliography in the United States and Europe, and Deborah Kempe joined the advisory board of artlibraries.net and was elected Vice President/President Elect of the Art Libraries Society of North America (arlis/na). It is important not to forget business-as- usual. The Archives staff created more than fifty finding aids and machine readable collection-level records, including the One East 70th Street Papers and the Bignou Galleries Albums, 1930–40s. They also provided documentation in support of curatorial and building operations projects, including the construction of the Portico Gallery and the re-lighting of the Boucher Room. With support from the Helen Clay Frick Foundation, the Archives continued to make the Frick Family Papers accessible to researchers. The Book Department added 7,520 new records to Arcade (of which 2,231 were for auction catalogues). More than 24,000 items were assessed by the Conservation Department, which then treated the materials and bar- coded them for inventory control purposes. Don Swanson completed 120 graphic design projects (twice the number from last year). The department finished the project to con- dense the book stacks, which involved mov- ing 13,665 linear feet of materials, ultimately freeing up 1,962 linear feet of space. In addition, 285 linear feet of materials were relocated to an offsite facility in Patterson, New York. In May the Center for the History of Collecting in America shortened its name to the Center for the History of Collecting. Since the Center’s founding in 2007, it has become increasingly clear that restrict- ing its focus to collecting in this country alone can needlessly exclude the international element that characterizes so much of the activity of art collecting. Several of the Center’s programs will retain their singular focus on American collecting—the Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America, for example—but we believe that the broader designation of the Center’s mis- sion will give us greater flexibility to explore the history of collecting in an increasingly international and interdisciplinary way. The Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America won the World- wide Books 2011 Award for a Distinguished Online Publication, which Samantha Deutch accepted at the arlis conference in Min- neapolis in March. The symposium “A Mar- ket for Merchant Princes: Collecting Italian Renaissance Paintings in America,” with a keynote by David Alan Brown was a great success, as was the symposium “Reflections across the Pond: British Models of Art Col- lecting and the American Response,” held May 6 and 7, with a keynote by James Stourton and concluding remarks by David Cannadine. Also in May, the Center took delivery of its first publication, Power Under- estimated: American Women Art Collectors, based on its 2008 symposium held in Venice. These achievements are the result of the commitment and professionalism of Library managers and their staffs as well as their willingness to innovate, but none would have been possible without the support of the members of the entire institution and, in particular, of our Director, Anne Poulet. Stephen Bury Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian Annual Report July 2010–June 2011 12
Page 1 and 2: The Frick Collection annual report
Page 3 and 4: The Frick Collection Board of Trust
Page 5 and 6: whose foundation underwrote the gal
Page 7 and 8: Farewell from the Director Anne L.
Page 9 and 10: Report of the Associate Director an
Page 11: presented, “When Frick’s House
Page 15 and 16: Gifts and Exchanges (Continued) Wil
Page 17 and 18: Lectures (Continued) March 23, 2011
Page 19 and 20: Concerts October 10, 2010 Ensemble
Page 21 and 22: Statement of Activities June 30, 20
Page 23 and 24: Melinda and Paul Sullivan Mr. and M
Page 25 and 26: David Orr and Brant Wong Mr. and Mr
Page 27 and 28: Mr. and Mrs. John R. Robinson Mr. a
Page 29 and 30: Eugene M. Lang Christopher Larson a
Page 31 and 32: Mr. and Mrs. Erik Sandvick Danielle
Page 33 and 34: Corporate Members and Sponsors $50,
Page 35 and 36: Helen Freeman Membership Coordinato
Page 37 and 38: Frick Art Reference Library Staff A

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