Established 2007 (2007) Director Inge Reist | Type Research Center | |
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Location 10 East 71st Street,
New York, NY Website www.frick.org/research/center | ||
The Center for the History of Collecting is a research institute of the Frick Art Reference Library, which is attached to The Frick Collection. It promotes and sponsors the study of the history of collecting.
Contents
History
Housed in the Frick Art Reference Library at 10 East 71st Street (between Madison and Fifth Avenue) in New York City, the Center for the History of Collecting was established in 2007 to encourage and sustain research on the development of public and private art collections in Europe and the United States from the early modern period to the present.
The center supports a broad range of intellectual initiatives. 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.
Symposia, Lectures, and Publications
Between 2007- 2015, The Center for the History of Collecting organized the following symposia on the history of collecting:
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.
Collaborations
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. In addition, it facilitates oral and video histories of dealers and collectors who have helped to shape American collecting through the twentieth century. 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.
Digital Scholarship
The Center for the History of Collecting created and maintains an archives directory, which is a growing index of collectors, dealers, auction houses and galleries, presented with historical notes and with the locations of their archival materials. 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. 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.
Prizes and Fellowships
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. The book prize honorees include: