Frick Collection Announces Two New Online Databases
By STAN PARCHIN
February 22, 2010
|
| The Frick Collection’s Fifth Avenue façade. Photograph by Richard di Liberto. |
|---|
New York's Frick Collection announced this morning the launch of its prestigious Art Reference Library's two new electronic resources available online: the Montias database of Dutch art inventories from Holland's Golden Age and another related to the history of collecting art in the United States. Both are accessible to Internet users for free.
Inge Reist, Director of the Frick’s Center for the History of Collecting in America, said, “Art historians and others will find the two new resources fascinating and rich in information. Such a consolidated and easily searched online source as the new Archives Directory will prove invaluable to this deepening field of study. It will ensure that researchers can locate primary documents such as letters, bills of sale and other transaction records which may lead to new discoveries and inspire fresh perspectives.”
Montias Database
The Montias database is named after eminent Yale University economist John Michael Montias (1928-2005), a chronicler of Dutch paintings and their 17th-century auction prices. The Frick Collection's online resource provides the reader with an unprecedented (although incomplete) view of art ownership in Amsterdam from 1597 to 1681. It includes searchable buyer and seller information as well as details about more than 50,000 paintings, prints, sculptures, pieces of furniture and works of decorative art. The database's records were assembled from nearly 1,300 city inventories. Approximately half were prepared for auctions. The remainder come from death notice listings for estates and documents related to bankruptcy cases.
American Collections Database
Inaugurated in 2007, the Frick Collection's Center for the History of Collecting in America continues to aid researchers in this area of inquiry. Its new online Archives Directory, the first of its kind, assembles in one place valuable information about the location and nature of more than 1,500 American art collectors' documents and archives from more than 300 repositories.
Permalink: http://artmuseumjournal.com/frick_online_databases.aspx
