Digitization of Deteriorating Photographs of American Paintings

FAIN: PW-50310-09

Frick Collection (New York, NY 10021-4981)
Inge Reist (Project Director: August 2008 to August 2011)

The digitization of 15,000 images of works of art, primarily early American portraits photographed 1922-67 in homes and public institutions throughout the United States.

The Frick Collection's Frick Art Reference Library is proposing a two-year project to digitize, and make available to an international community of students and researchers, images and documentation that describe 15,000 works of art from its negative collection. Most of these unique large-format black and white glass plate and acetate negatives, made between 1922 and 1967, document works of art in private homes and small public collections throughout the United States. They record paintings that are generally not well-known and in some instances are the only extant images of works that have been subsequently lost, stolen, or destroyed. These negatives, and study photographs printed from them, together with the extensive firsthand information about the works of art, constitute an irreplaceable resource for humanities research, particularly for the history of art and art collecting, American history, social history, material culture, and genealogy.