It may seem obvious, but it turns out that when you use something, you believe that thing holds value; if you don't use it, you might not find it to be particularly valuable. At least, that's what some researchers feel about web archives, according to a study I conducted earlier this year.

During my 2019-2020 academic year in the Library and Information Science program at Pratt Institute, I was a New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) Web Archiving Fellow at the Frick Art Reference Library, working with websites that align with the collecting policies of NYARC, which includes The Frick Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Brooklyn Museum. This technical work with web archives, as well as professional development experiences I enjoyed during my fellowship, inspired the direction of a practicum project in which I investigated obstacles facing current and potential scholarly users of web archives, and some of the ways web archives might be used in research and in art.

For the project I first conducted a survey on the scholarly use of web archives, gathering responses from 66 participants who conduct research in the fields of library and information science, art history, digital humanities, computer science, and other areas. In addition to demonstrating that the use of web archives increases the value a researcher sees in them, the results show that there are opportunities for institutions to improve researchers' familiarity with and comfort accessing and using them. The responses suggest that could be achieved through better and increased promotion of web archive collections, so researchers know what's in them and how that relates to their work, as well as better promotion of and instruction on the tools that are available to study the vast data available from web archives.

In the second stage of the project, I tested some of those tools myself to better understand the challenges facing those who want to use web archives in their research. One survey participant suggested “creating new art” as a possible use of web archives, which was an idea that I ran a bit with. I worked with the Archives Unleashed Cloud, an open-source analysis tool that was designed to help researchers analyze web archives, and then using the network analysis tool Gephi, I created data visualizations representing the URL connections in the Brooklyn Museum web archive collection. Finally, utilizing a Python program, I created an interpretive "data physicalization" (in this case, a cross-stitch project) to demonstrate the ways we might use museum web archives to generate new art.

The result is a physical representation of digital data that was drawn from web content that I'd spent several months working to preserve. It’s a small bit of art that’s something like the reverse of the digitization projects that so many cultural institutions have been undertaking in the past several years. It’s also a reminder that there are physical aspects to digital objects, and that digital collections, such as web archives, require practical skills and labor (akin to learning a craft) to collect, preserve, provide access to — and find value in — them.

Mary Bakija was a 2019-2020 NYARC Web Archiving Fellow and recently completed her MSLIS at Pratt Institute.

Originally authored in June 2015 and revised in August 2018 by consultant Rebecca Guenther, the metadata application profile includes a summary and data dictionary of data elements for description of websites with archived versions in a MARC/RDA environment, notes on MARC record coding, and sample records created by NYARC catalogers. In addition, the data dictionary entries include mappings between the elements and those in other metadata standards, including BIBFRAME, EAD, schema.org, and OCLC guidelines, among others. NYARC has implemented these updated guidelines into our workflow for describing the archived websites included in NYARC’s 10 Archive-It collections. We welcome feedback from the community on our application profile for describing websites with archived versions. 

Many thanks to Rebecca Guenther for her excellent work on the profile and to NYARC’s technical services staff for their input and testing along the way! 

Sumitra Duncan, Head, Web Archiving Program at NYARC

Through my research as a Frick Art Reference Library intern, I was taken by the correspondence between Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) and Carel de Wild (1870–1922), a restorer and art dealer who advised the former. Poised at an exciting, transitional moment in the history of conservation and collecting, the story of de Wild reveals the shifting role of the early twentieth-century restorer.

After focusing on painting at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, de Wild studied restoration at museums in Vienna and Berlin through the sponsorship of Adelheid Emma Wilhelmina Theresia of Waldeck and Pyrmont (1858–1934), Queen Dowager of the Netherlands. He ran a successful restoration studio in The Hague near the Mauritshuis and worked for Goupil & Cie in Paris, France, before departing for the United States in 1911 (Van Duijn and Te Marvelde, 818). De Wild worked at M. Knoedler and Co. in New York City as a restorer, and assisted with art acquisitions and appraisals (Riefstahl, 1). At that time, America experienced a massive influx of European paintings. The change in environment from Europe to North America required specialized attention related to the artworks' conservation (Holler and Klose-Ulmann, 92). Accordingly, de Wild’s experience as a restorer and art advisor kept him busy. He formed relationships with well-known art collectors such as J.P. Morgan (1837–1913), Joseph E. Widener (1871–1943), and Frick, who purportedly “always followed [de Wild’s] advice.” (Riefstahl, 2; Bridge, 16 Feb. 1920).

Though research is no replacement for acquaintance, studying the letters of de Wild, I could not help but begin forming an impression of his character. Writing after the death of de Wild, the Medievalist scholar Rudolf Meyer Riefstahl (1880–1936) described his “simplicity…integrity through knowledge…[and] personal grace and charm” (Riefstahl, 2). While this sentiment is echoed in other accounts of de Wild’s life, it is also true that his strong opinions occasionally ruffled some feathers.

In 1917, Frick was urged by Abraham Bredius (1855–1946), an art historian and Rembrandt specialist as well as a former de Wild mentor, to remove the painting Old Woman with a Book, attributed at the time to Rembrandt (1606–1669) from his collection. Though Bredius had endorsed the work as a Rembrandt to its previous owner, Jules Porgés (1839–1921), he later changed his positon, telling Frick that it was likely by Rembrandt’s pupil Carel van der Pluym (1625–1672), if not a modern forgery. In so saying, he cast doubt on the qualifications of de Wild as an art advisor, since he had examined the work fully before approving Frick’s purchase. De Wild responded with a scathing five-page letter that denounces Bredius’s entire approach to art. He writes:

[No one] has studied paintings more devotedly than you have. But, you have never studied the medium itself, paint…It is my firm conviction that knowledge of this kind is indispensable…A profound student would never have told the world that [the painting] was a wonderful work by Rembrandt, to turn around and exclaim some years afterward –“no, this is never a Rembrandt, it seems not to be old even, it may be a spurious picture.” (Carel de Wild, 6 Feb. 1917)

From this, I gather that the main difference between Bredius and de Wild was one of methodology. De Wild prioritized studying the material of a painting, while Bredius favored stylistic assessments, which, as de Wild furiously notes, are subject to change. Today, neither perspective seems wholly off base. According to technical examination conducted by de Wild, who was an early proponent of pigment analysis, Old Woman with a Book must have dated back to the time of Rembrandt (de Wild, 6 Feb. 1917). On the other hand, perhaps thanks to Bredius, the painting is no longer displayed as a Rembrandt. 

The back-and-forth between the two men demonstrates the changing function of the restorer during this historical moment, while also indicating the tension between materiality and style that was of pivotal importance at the time. Although officially, his professional duties lay in the technical task of refurbishing art objects, de Wild writes here in an almost connoisseur-like capacity, providing his own assessment of the painting based on his experience with Rembrandt’s technique. For this reason, it is apparent to me that de Wild’s value to Frick consisted not only in his technical skills, but in his general knowledge of art, and the network of art experts to which he had access. The fact that de Wild was able to go head to head with a renowned historian like Bredius in such a manner is itself significant, and speaks to a level of international notoriety that served him well in his career. Coupled with other materials in the archive, this letter gives an impression of the twentieth-century restorer as one eager to engage with the art world at large, and to thoroughly evaluate the artworks he encountered, instead of just repairing them.

On the other hand, though de Wild was arguably as much of an advisor as he was a technician, his strident advocacy of a materials-based attitude towards both restoration and art history strikes me as especially telling. His insistence that art professionals were responsible for being familiar with the physical materials of the artworks they analyzed was evidently not the norm at the time, given Bredius’s swift dismissal of it. One could contend that de Wild’s empirical method of art analysis proved predictive of later trends, given the current prevalence of the scientific examination of art.  

For those interested in de Wild, I have written a Wikipedia entry about him and his family, a group of art professionals who were likewise progressive in their roles.

Ingrid Kottke, Intern, Frick Art Reference Library

Works Cited

Bridge, John Howard. Letter to H.C. McEldowney. 16 February 1920. The Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library Archives, New York, NY. 

Holler, Manfred J., and Barbara Klose-Ullmann. “Art Goes America.” Journal of Economic Issues, vol. 44, no. 1, 2010, pp. 89–112.

Riefstahl, R. M. Household Furniture, Important Paintings & Objects of Art: From the Estate of the Late Carel F. L. de Wild, Expert on paintings and Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. New York: Electronic Reproduction by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014: Anderson Galleries, Inc. 1924.

Van Duijn, Esther; Te Marvelde, Mireille. "The Art of Conservation VII: Hopman and De Wild: The historical importance of two Dutch families of restorers". Burlington Magazine, vol. 158, no. 1363, 2016, pp. 812–823.

Wild, de, Carel. Letter to Abraham Bredius. 6 February 1917. Art Collecting Files of Henry Clay Frick, Series I: Purchases. The Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library Archives, New York, NY. 

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend MCN 2017, the 50th annual meeting of the Museum Computer Network, thanks to a fellowship from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Digital Library Federation. The Kress+DLF GLAM Cross-Pollinator Fellowship is intended to foster connections between those who work in cultural heritage fields. Libraries, archives, and museums involve different practices and professional competencies, but deal with many of the same issues, so cross-disciplinary collaboration has rich potential. 

At NYARC, we collect web-based publications, including art history and provenance resources, catalogues raisonnes, NYC gallery websites, auction catalogues, and our own museum websites. We do this so that the information experienced through these publications survives, and ultimately so that it can be transferred to existing and future scholars and be used in the production of new knowledge. 

However different our means may be, this is what we do in libraries, archives, and museums: we get the knowledge to the people. We make sure we can do this forever. We try to do it better.

MCN has been talking about how to achieve this with technological aid since 1967(!!!), and their first conference was held in 1968. Fifty years later, the conversation has grown to encompass many emerging trends and changing practices in the use of digital technology. 

Now, not only have the traditional realms of libraries and archives (such as books and historically significant primary source materials) moved into the digital, but so have the ways we evaluate our successes and failures, the ways our visitors experience our collections, and even entire workflows. Across the cultural heritage field, we’re collecting and producing phone apps, web apps, APIs, data, videos, images, social media posts, blogs with interpretive content, interactive tools for gallery visitors, visualizations, 3D models, augmented and virtual realities...

The pool of creators of digital content has grown to a deluge, and the quantity and variety of digital files are expanding beyond what we can realistically expect to save. For all their ubiquity, digital resources are fragile. The information they contain changes over time. They rely on hardware and software to be accessed, which itself needs to be maintained. Increasingly, their content is wrapped under layers of tools and dynamic content, which again come with new challenges.  

This is why it’s so important for digital preservation not to be a conversation limited to digital preservationists. In order to maintain digital resources, and allow them to be accessed and used in knowledge production, whole institutions need to engage in sustainable practices in creating them, deciding what’s important, and ensuring that they continue to be used (the most effective kind of preservation!) I was pleased to discover at MCN that these issues were at the forefront of the top minds working in the museum field. 

A full account of the incredible presentations and thoughts this conference introduced me to would be beyond the scope of one blog post, but I got a glimpse of the work being done to 

• Open up images, datasets, APIs, and other digital assets to online audiences

• Leverage platforms like Wikipedia, ARTstor, Pinterest, and DPLA to increase awareness of digital collections, and analyze use to ensure that digital assets are reaching the right audiences

• Encourage the production and promotion of digital scholarship that adds value and utility to museum collections, encouraging further use

• Ensure that digital tools and processes are simple, standardized, interoperable, and well-documented

• Create new standards for specific digital preservation needs 

• Develop an empathetic organizational culture centered on human relationships and values, generating long-term commitment to digital projects

These points encompass all organizational levels and all types of roles, from curators to tech developers, archivists to educators, and so many more. They enrich the museum world and the wider circles of culture, creation, justice, and education that surround it--and they happen to make digital output more easily accessible, archivable, and preservable, too! 

There’s plenty of work to be done, to be sure. And sometimes it can seem overwhelming. But one more theme that came up again and again in different contexts throughout the conference, from the keynote to the very last presentation I attended, was acknowledging and making deep use of the work that has already been done. 

MCN was a wonderful reminder that nobody has to start from scratch. However different our particular professional specialties, there is so much to gain from respecting and drawing on the expertise of others. It’s hard not to be awed by technology-enabled projects and shiny visuals. It’s easy to be inspired to learn the technical knowledge they require to produce, promote, and preserve them. But it’s really, really valuable to be inspired to develop the softer skills that are ultimately just as important: trusting, listening, and taking the time to learn.

Hope to see you next year in Denver, MCN!

Carissa Pfeiffer, NYARC Web Archiving Fellow, Frick Art Reference Library; MSLIS Candidate at Pratt Institute School of Information

Before The Frick Collection existed, The Lenox Library stood in its place along Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71st Streets in New York City. Built to house and publicly display the private collection of James Lenox (1800–1880), a wealthy bibliophile and art collector, The Lenox Library was one of the first of its type in America (Stevens, 144). Unlike other public institutions, The Lenox Library was unique in its combination of a research library and art venue. Lenox was inspired by The British Museum, which at the time of the founding of The Lenox Library, housed a library and art collection in one building for the public (The Lenox Library: The Library as Museum). The Lenox Library opened its doors in 1877 and was designed by the architect Richard Morris Hunt (1827–1895). For more information about the design and construction of the building, see the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) post Before The Frick: Remembering The Lenox Library.

Although admission was free, entry to the art galleries required visitors to request advance tickets by mail. The hours of the galleries varied over the years. In 1879, they were open Mondays and Fridays from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. In 1882, the hours of the galleries were expanded to three days a week; Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. In 1885, they were open Tuesday through Friday from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. 1892 saw the hours expanded to Monday through Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and the requirement to request tickets by post was dropped.

The art galleries contained works from a wide span of artists; such as Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), Charles Robert Leslie (1794–1859), Samuel Morse (1791–1872), Henry Inman (1801–1846), Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), and  Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851). Lenox often commissioned contemporary artists to create works or bought art directly from them. Lenox wrote to Leslie (see above) tasking him with traveling to the studio of Turner (see above) and buying one of his paintings. He purchased Staffa, Fingal's Cave on behalf of Lenox in 1845, and it was the first Turner painting to cross the Atlantic Ocean (Turner at East 70th Street before The Frick Collection). Lenox’s correspondence with both Leslie and Turner is preserved in the Manuscript Division of the New York Public Library (NYPL) as part of the Lenox Family Papers.

The art galleries, comprised of spaces designated specifically for painting or sculpture, were not set up like a typical museum. As a collector, Lenox arranged the galleries based on his preferences. In 1879, a galleries guide was available for purchase at a cost of 15 cents, which listed the title, artist, and other details about the works on view. The guide was likely popular as updated versions were printed in 1882, 1885, and 1892. At the time of the opening of The Lenox Library, the galleries contained 145 paintings, which increased to 148 by 1892. Copies of the galleries guide can be viewed online through the Hathi Trust or in person at the Frick. In 1891, an additional space called The Robert L. Stuart Gallery was opened to display 242 paintings left to The Lenox Library by Mary Stuart (1815–1891), the widow of Robert L. Stuart (1810–1879). A copy of the Stuart Gallery guide can be viewed through the Internet Archive.

Although The Lenox Library was demolished in 1912, it continued to shape New York City. Most importantly, its holdings assisted in forming the collections of NYPL. Similar to The Lenox Library, NYPL published a guide to its art galleries that is available through the Internet Archive. Sadly, most of the art from Lenox’s collection did not remain together. NYPL auctioned many of the artworks, which were acquired by museums and private collectors. An example is the aforementioned Staffa, Fingal’s Cave, which is now owned by the Yale Center for British Art.

To learn more about NYARC and The Lenox Library visit the Frick Art Reference Library for Open House New York Weekend this October.

Caroline Chang, Intern, Frick Art Reference Library

Works Cited

The Lenox Library: The Library as Museum. Web. 17 July 2017.

Stevens, Henry. Recollections of James Lenox and the Formation of His Library. New York: New York Public Library, 1951. Print.

Bury, Stephen J. Turner at East 70th Street before The Frick Collection. Web. 17 July 2017.

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) visited Morocco from January through June of 1832. He was part of the diplomatic mission of Charles-Henri-Edgar, Comte de Mornay. He made drawings and annotations in seven sketchbooks during the trip. The Frick Art Reference Library has facsimiles of two of the sketchbooks. The facsimiles were made in 1909 (Musée du Louvre album), published by André Marty, Paris, and in 1913 (Chateau de Chantilly album), published by J. Terquem & Cie., Paris. Each facsimile is accompanied by an introductory volume with transcripts by the art historian Jean Guiffrey.

Coincidently, in 2010, The Frick Collection acquired Moroccan Interior, a small watercolor and gouache over graphite by Delacroix, as a gift from the estate of its former director Charles Ryskamp. This work on paper was probably cut from one of the aforementioned seven albums made by the artist during his time in Morocco.

Delacroix is considered an Orientalist painter. This usually refers to a nineteenth-century genre of European Academic art that represents the Middle East, North Africa, South West Asia, and South East Asia. Delcroix is famous for paintings such as the eroticized and fantasized Women of Algiers.

Scholar Edward Said insisted in his seminal work Orientalism that Western representations of the Orient were tainted by an air of superiority that arose from colonialism. Delacroix, having been sent over to Africa as a colonial painter, seems to exemplify this viewpoint. An opposing viewpoint to this theory denies such a close relationship between art and politics, and emphasizes the role of individual taste and technological developments in directing culture. Historian John Mackenzie in his book Orientalism: History, Theory, and the Arts conveyed this counter argument, claiming that the Industrial Revolution in Europe was responsible for a sense of nostalgia that turned people’s attention towards the East. Admiration and longing for what they saw as lost, pure craftsmanship triggered Orientalism.

The sketches in the Frick facsimile albums created by Delacroix during his time in Morocco and Moroccan Interior appear to adhere to the latter interpretation of Orientalism. This work on paper is free of violence, eroticism, or fantasy themes often seen in Orientalist art. It instead focuses on the beautiful architectural shapes that might have been previously unknown to the artist. Delacroix often includes color annotations—red, green, blue to ensure accuracy. Far from presenting a false image of the East, the delicacy of the small, personal drawings in his sketchbooks arguably conveys a sense of admiration.

However, Linda Nochlin’s essay “The Imaginary Orient” in her anthology The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth Century Art and Society argues that the seeming accuracy and realism of Orientalist paintings is precisely what makes them so problematic. In copying and documenting architectural surroundings with photographic precision, artists gave the impression that they were being authentic. This authenticity was often lost when they added figures in ancient costumes holding medieval instruments, falsely excluding the Orient from modernity. Nochlin argued that this contributed to the growing European misconceptions about the East.

Monica Lindsay-Perez, Intern, Frick Art Reference Library

In June of 2016, the Brooklyn Museum purchased the correspondence of Jane Schenck Malbone and Ralph Malbone at a Swann Gallery auction. This exciting acquisition enriches the Library’s holdings of primary source and published documentation on the Schenck family, who were prominent Dutch farmers in Brooklyn and one of the first families to settle the area around 1650. The historic homes of two members of the Schenck family, Jan Martense who was Jane’s great great grandfather, and Nicholas Schenck Jr, who was Jane’s father, are on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum. The recent acquisition consists of one hundred and twenty-three letters.  Ninety one of these letters are between Jane and Ralph and the other thirty two are between Jane or Ralph and various correspondents including family members, business partners, and friends. The majority of the letters date from the period of Jane and Ralph’s courtship (1810-1815), although they do range all the way to 1859 right before Ralph’s death. The letters are teeming with contextual information about Jane and Ralph’s lives in the nineteenth century. They not only chronicle a fascinating love story, but also give important details of life in Brooklyn during the War of 1812, societal expectations of Jane and her experience with feeling pressure from her family, the smallpox epidemic in New York, and Ralph’s entrepreneurial business affairs.

Jane Schenck Malbone (1792-1843) grew up in Flatlands, Brooklyn, New York at the turn of the nineteenth century. She was the eldest girl of eight siblings, and was independent in spirit. The Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives owns the personal journal of Jane Schenck, which has been consulted as a primary resource for the history of Brooklyn on several occasions. Most of Jane’s family spoke Dutch before her birth, and the journal, along with a stitching sampler Jane made to practice her English alphabet, let us know that Jane was fluent in English from a young age. The stitching sampler is also on view inside her historic home in the Decorative Arts gallery of the Brooklyn Museum. We are lucky enough to have a primary resource like Jane’s journal which documents countless events in her life in great detail including births, deaths, marriages, and social gatherings. In 1815, however, there is an abrupt entry stating Jane’s own marriage to a Mr. Ralph Malbone of Connecticut, lacking any further details or previous mention of the man. It was not until the acquisition of Jane and Ralph’s personal correspondence, that we learned the truth behind her silence.

Ralph Malbone (1785-1860) was born in Killingly, Connecticut and moved to Brooklyn around 1810 at the age of about 25. His ancestors were wealthy merchants from Newport, Rhode Island; among them was Colonel Francis Malbone Sr. (1728-1785) who fought in the Revolutionary War and was most likely Ralph’s great uncle. Around 1773 artist Gilbert Stuart painted a portrait of Francis Malbone Jr., who would later become a U.S. Senator, and his brother Saunders Malbone. This painting now resides in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Ralph’s extension of the family moved to Connecticut and eventually fell upon hard financial times. When Ralph came to Brooklyn in 1810, he was unknown to the community and did not have a prominent family name or fortune to back him up. When he set his sights on Jane Schenck, he was looking far beyond his reach.

The couple met when Ralph began boarding at the Schenck family home in 1810. The attraction was instant, and Jane’s parents forbade her from being in contact with Ralph, for in their eyes, he was an unsuitable match for Jane. Once we discovered this information by reading their letters, it was obvious why Jane did not describe Ralph in her journal before their marriage—she would not have risked producing such evidence for their secret courtship. In order to communicate surreptitiously, Ralph developed an elaborate ruse to keep Mr. and Mrs. Schenck from discovering their letters. He addressed his writings to a Miss Enaj Werter (Enaj is Jane spelled backwards) and would have them delivered to the Manhattan post office. Since there was no one in the city by that name, the letters would sit at the post office until Jane was able to retrieve them. Sending the letters to a Manhattan post office rather than a Brooklyn one insured that Jane would not be recognized by the local Brooklyn townspeople when she picked up the letters. As an extra manner of secrecy and perhaps flirtation, the couple would use a form of backwards writing in which the words of the sentence are in the correct order but each individual word is spelled backwards. Often times a single line of backwards writing is found amidst a regular letter, but in one particularly fascinating letter from 1810 (seen here), written while he was still boarding at Jane’s house, Ralph chose to write the entire letter backwards, surely to deter any suspicious readers from reading its steamy contents.

In June of 1812 the war broke out, and Ralph, ever the resourceful entrepreneur, saw it as an opportunity to amass the fortune he so desperately needed in order to marry Jane. Having been trained in administering vaccines back in Connecticut, Ralph decided to leave Brooklyn and travel around the Northeast United States administering smallpox vaccines to soldiers and citizens. Their secret courtship persisted for another three years until Ralph returned to Brooklyn in 1815 with his modest fortune and officially asked for Jane’s hand in marriage. They were married on August 18, 1815 at the St. James Episcopalian Church in Newton, Long Island. For the first few months of their marriage, Ralph continued to travel around Long Island administering vaccines. On March 10, 1816 Jane revealed to Ralph in a letter that she was pregnant with their first child, and on October 23, 1816 Nicholas “Schenck” Malbone was born. Nicholas was primarily referred to as Schenck, which may have been a tradition at that time, since Jane’s eldest brother was called Remsen, their mother’s maiden name. Ralph settled down to tend to his family and opened up a grocery store at 310 Fulton Street where they lived from about 1817-1837. The couple had four children—Nicholas Schenck, Julia Maria, Mary Esther, and Evan Johnson.

The Brooklyn Museum has more than one connection to Jane and Ralph Malbone. In 1825 the cornerstone for the Brooklyn Apprentice’s Library was laid by General Lafayette at the corner of Cranberry and Henry Streets in Brooklyn. In 1858 Walt Whitman recounted the event in an article for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle saying, “The writer hereof was present at the laying of the Library corner-stone—being then, (Fourth of July, 1825,) a little Brooklyn school-boy, six years old—and remembers the whole scene very distinctly…Lafayette himself assisted. The writer recollects well the pride he felt in being one of those who happened to be taken into Lafayette’s arms, and passed down.” 1 Jane and Ralph were living on Fulton Street at this time, and were well-known members of the community. It is very possible that they were in attendance at this event or at least were aware of its happening. The Brooklyn Apprentice’s Library was reorganized into the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1843 and would later become what is now known as the Brooklyn Museum.

Around 1837 Jane and Ralph moved to Fayette, NY in Seneca County. Jane lived out the remainder of her life there, passing away on May 28, 1843 at the age of 51. Ralph immediately moved back to Brooklyn and took up an office at 1 Front Street where he worked in real estate until his death in 1860. Although Ralph remarried, he was eventually buried next to his true love, Jane, at the Dutch Reformed Church Cemetery in Flatlands. In 1862 Whitman wrote a column for the Brooklyn Standard called “Brooklyniana.” In this column, he lists the “old and well-known citizens of Brooklyn” and Mr. Ralph Malbone makes the cut, even two years after his death.2 Ralph ascended from being a penniless outsider to a well-known and respectable citizen of Brooklyn. His and Jane’s love story not only tells the tale of two young defiant lovers, but also of the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and determination of young Americans living in Brooklyn at the onset of our nation’s independence. 

Giana Ricci, Kress NYARC Fellow for Reader Services, Brooklyn Museum Library

Works Cited

[1] Whitman, Walt. “Our City Just 35 Years Since.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 3, 1858.

[2] Whitman, Walt. "Brooklyniana, No.17." Brooklyn Standard 5 April 1862.

Megan De Armond, Assistant Digital and Metadata Librarian/NYARC Web Archiving Technician, and Coral Salomón, NYARC Web Archiving Fellow, currently work at The Frick Art Reference Library. Below, they discuss their first time attending an Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) Conference and what they learned from the experience.

Expectations

We had the opportunity to attend the 45th Annual ARLIS/NA Conference from February 5-9 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Both of us work for NYARC at The Frick Art Reference Library where we collect, capture, describe, and archive web content of resources for the study of art. We were eager to attend the ARLIS/NA Conference, "Arts du Monde," to learn more about developments in web archiving and to discover different initiatives occurring in institutions across North America.

Web Archiving and the Arts

It was very exciting to hear about all the developments occurring in the web archiving world, especially in regards to visual content. Individuals from partner organizations like The Internet Archive and OCLC made an appearance to discuss how art libraries are pushing the boundaries and helping develop capture and access tools, as well as formulate best practices for archived websites.

Coral - Web archiving had a strong presence at the 2017 ARLIS/NA Conference. I had the pleasure of attending the Web Archiving Special Interest Group meeting, hosted by NYARC’s Sumitra Duncan and The Internet Archive’s Karl-Rainer Blumenthal. During the meeting  members discussed challenges, successes, and developments in web archiving.

The Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute Library presented on the workflow established to capture online content for the 2017 Venice Biennale. The institution is using the Internet Archive’s Archive-It software and Rhizome's Webrecorder to effectively archive this collection, which includes sanctioned material such as the biennial’s official website, blogs, and participant's social media accounts. The speaker discussed that while Archive-It has proven to be more efficient at archiving large websites, Webrecorder is useful for capturing social media apps (like Instagram), screensavers, and other small yet very visual online content. Webrecorder is still in its beta stage, but hopefully we will see more innovative uses of these complementing tools to create sustainable web collections.  

Among the good news that resulted from the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute Library’s efforts is that the Internet Archive is improving its crawling capabilities based on the library’s experience harvesting the biennial’s online content. Furthermore, the cooperative efforts between libraries, traditional archives and the Internet Archive has helped it focus on the importance of provenance. The organization is working on improving its interface, so that users that retrieve archived content can easily access information about the institution that archived the material and the collection.

Meanwhile, throughout the conference, the Frick Art Reference Library's Deborah Kempe did an excellent job presenting the efforts made by OCLC’s web archiving working group, as well as explaining the importance of archiving born-digital art resources. As art libraries and other organizations begin to take on web archiving, establishing workflows and best practices becomes more imperative. OCLC recently brought together individuals from different institutions to evaluate existing and emerging approaches for metadata creation of archived websites and to recommend best practices that meet user needs, ensuring discoverability and consistency. Deborah explained that the Web Archiving Metadata Working Group engaged in a comprehensive literature review and prepared two reports. The first report focuses on user needs and behaviors specific to archived web content. The second, which has yet to be released, outlines existing and recommended practices for metadata. In anticipation of the second report’s release, the group has shared information on core components of data profiles and tool evaluations.

Megan - Although I am familiar with web archiving, I attended the workshop Getting Started with Web Archiving presented by Sumitra Duncan and Karl-Rainer Blumenthal to get an outside perspective on what other institutions and individuals might be interested in learning or concerned about. Sumitra and Karl offered a lot of practical advice and suggestions. They gave an overview of Web Archiving Tools and Services such as Archive-It, Save Page Now, Social Feed Manager, WAIL, Webrecorder, and youtube-dl. Additionally they had worksheets with questions that could help an individual or institution assess what services and resources would be appropriate for their particular situation and purpose, questions to help attendees assess collection scope, and a decision-tree worksheet to help assess best approach to web archiving. All this material would definitely assist in setting up and/or improving a current web archiving program. A budget sheet was also provided to give attendees an idea of what a program could cost with various staffing and subscriptions included that one could decide on value and importance based on cost.

I also attended Debbie Kempe’s session entitled Expanding Web Archives for the Arts. It was exciting to see so many people engaged in the discussion and also to have Karl-Rainer Blumenthal there to offer a vendor perspective and to share a little about the Internet Archive’s current efforts and advances with Web Archiving. There was discussion of expanding web archiving of art gallery websites. Currently NYARC includes NYC galleries in their collection scope and sees the value of archiving beyond this area, but would need partners to come in to help with administration, scope, and quality assurance of sites. There was discussion of partnerships and different ways of approaching a partnership as well as possible ways of getting funding to happen.

Other Initiatives in Art Libraries

Coral - One of my favorite panels was Critical Information Literacy in Art and Design Libraries. The session stressed that visual literacy is information literacy. Sian Evans and Jennifer Ferretti, two librarians from the Decker Library of Maryland Institute College of Arts, presented on their new critical pedagogy program focused on engaged instruction and topical library guides. Among the libguides discussed were their Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” guide and “Understanding Civic Unrest in Baltimore, 1968-2015.” Jennifer Ferretti explained how she used Beyoncé’s visual album to introduce students to the concepts of attribution and how to research artistic work. She discussed how students studied similarities between Pipilotti Rist’s “Ever is Over All” and images in the video “Hold Up” to further understand the importance of references.

The duo presented practical tips on how to create engaging library instruction sessions geared towards art and design students using current events, popular culture and instruction formats undergraduates were familiar with like “mind maps,” One of their best pieces of advice, that applies to anything in life, was to be yourself. Don’t take on “hip” topics if you’re not interested in them. Part of engaging users is to be engaged yourself.

Megan - One of the most exciting sessions I attended was Making Collections Accessible: Legal Tools for the 21st Century, moderated by Debbie Kempe with speakers Greg Cram, Associate Director, Copyright and Information Policy, New York Public Library; Kenneth Crews, Attorney with Gibson, Hoffman, Pancione; and Elizabeth Townsend-Gard, Jill H. and Avram A. Glazer Professor in Social Entrepreneurship and Associate Professor of Law, Co-Director of Tulane Center for IP Law and Culture. Each speaker presented on their perspective on intellectual property rights. Kenneth Crews pointed out that nothing in the statute addresses digitization and that the lack of answers, give us answers. In regard to fair use, he emphasized the importance of percentage: how much of the original is used and how is it being used. He proposed questioning whether something is scholarly derivative or scholarly transformative. He also shared that there has been a shift in responsibilities to the rights holder versus the courts and suggested that engaging in Creative Commons licensing makes works more valuable.

Greg Cram spoke about NYPL’s collection of 12,000+ images from the World’s Fair “World of Tomorrow” from 1930-40. He said that NYPL focuses on risk calculation. Cram noted that by making these images available online, NYPL could be at risk of $1.8 billion in damages. Since none of the works had authorship, he deemed it was worth the risk. NYPL created an app and online exhibition, Biblion, to showcase the images.

Elizabeth Townsend-Gard presented a new tool that she co-created, Durationator. My work as an Assistant Digital and Metadata Librarian has given me an opportunity to do some testing with this tool. The Durationator developers are working very hard to have it be as functional as useful as possible for libraries and archives. The tool offers legal information about what a library or an archive can do with a digitized item whether an image, a book, a letter, or another material type. The tool gives an interpretation of the statute so that users can then decide the best way to make it accessible. Unfortunately, I missed the second hour of this session where there was continued discussion of Durationator and the needs of libraries and archives with regard to copyright and fair use.

Poster Session

Megan - There were 37 posters that were part of this session, so many to recount; I am hoping they will be made available on the ARLIS/NA Learning Portal at some point in the future (along with the recorded sessions from the conference). Abstracts of posters can be found here. I co-presented a poster with a colleague from graduate school, Abigail Purcell, entitled Artists’ Books Holdings. Our project was an attempt to look at artists’ books holdings on an international scale using programming with information visualizations to show our results. We were both taking Programming for Cultural Heritage (PFCH) with Visiting Assistant Professor, Matthew Miller and Art Librarianship with Visiting Associate Professor, Ken Soehner, who is also Chief Librarian of the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We wanted to combine our new found interests in artists’ books and programming with our project. You can read more and check out our code on our Github page. It is still a work in progress, one that either of us would be happy to share more about if interested.

Take Away

It is an exciting time to be an art librarian. It was inspiring to see the multidisciplinary approaches being enacted by art librarians across the country. We were heartened to see what a strong presence web archiving had at the conference and to know that NYARC is at the forefront of capturing and preserving our born-digital cultural patrimony.

Coral and Megan want to thank the Frick Art Reference Library and Pratt Institute for the support in their attendance to this year’s conference.

Megan De Armond, Assistant Digital and Metadata Librarian/NYARC Web Archiving Technician, Frick Art Reference Library, The Frick Collection

Coral Salomón, NYARC Web Archiving Fellow, Frick Art Reference Library, The Frick Collection; Pratt Institute Graduate Student

A great deal has been accomplished since NYARC was established ten years ago. Let’s take a moment to briefly look at what we have achieved so far. First of all, none of what we have accomplished could have been possible without the support of our Museum Administrators and our respective Museum staff, especially our own dedicated and talented professional teams in our libraries and archives. We have been very lucky to have Lily Pregill as our NYARC Coordinator who has been key to making our collective work come together in a seamless way. Lily worked closely with our staff to move our projects ahead. For example, she was overseeing two working teams focused on technical issues and implementation of new resources. We congratulate Lily for her great work making NYARC a success and wish her the best as she moves on to a new position as Head of Information Systems at the Getty Research Institute. She will be very missed by us, but we are delighted she is going to a new and challenging role and perhaps can spread the collaborative work that we have initiated through NYARC.

We are also very grateful to major funders such as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, especially Don J. Waters, Senior Program Officer for Scholarly Communications, who has guided NYARC from an idea to a scholarly resource that benefits a large and diverse community of researchers. Max Marmor, President of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, has been instrumental in establishing the NYARC Kress Fellowship post-graduate program that provides opportunities to emerging art librarians who encourage use of the research collections held in our respective institutions. We also extend a big thank you to Dr. Tula Giannini, Dean and Professor at Pratt Institute, who has consistently supported NYARC since its beginning by collaborating with us on several grants. She has also established a fellows program that allows Pratt students to contribute to several projects in each of our libraries and archives to gain practical experience in preparation for their careers. METRO has supported several NYARC digitization projects that make our collections more accessible in a thematic way. Nate Hill, METRO’s Executive Director, has been especially supportive of our collaborations and has helped us move our projects forward.

NYARC grew from a need to shine a light on our research collections that have been traditionally hidden behind our museums' object collections. These research collections very often provide an intellectual link to the museum objects and are of great interest to researchers working locally, nationally and internationally. These research collections, made up of libraries and archives, very often provide information about the objects in our respective museum collections. Information can be found about the makers of the objects, when the objects were made, how they were made and why, and how the objects traveled to each of the museum collections. The research collections also provide a view into the cultural legacy of the world around us on a global scale and very often go beyond the scope of the museum collections held by our respective institutions. Together the NYARC collections support art historical research across the entire span of art history ranging from ancient art up to and including contemporary art. We have a shared collection development plan that allows us to continually build on our existing strengths. In response to a demand for more information about our research collections, NYARC has allowed us to raise the visibility of the library and archive collections within our institutions for all of our users working now and in the future.

The NYARC collaboration encourages us to think "outside of the box" and to develop strategies together as library and archive professionals that would be difficult to do separately at our own institutions. NYARC benefits go beyond the needs of the libraries and archives and extend to each institution’s priorities to provide access to its collections, and to foster the educational mission that each museum plays on a local, national, and international level. Working together, we have developed a brand that speaks to our users both collectively and individually while retaining our own identification and brand.

For more information about the history of NYARC and its programs, visit the NYARC website. The following is a brief summary of NYARC's major accomplishments to date:

• Arcade offers over one million bibliographic records representing books, periodicals, auction catalogs, special collections, photo and paper archives, archives, and electronic resources for researchers. Arcade provides a cost efficiency for running one online catalog system instead of three separate systems. Cost efficiency is also found in staffing to support the online system.

• Newly implemented as part of our Arcade offerings, NYARC Discovery is a research tool and a gateway to a trove of rich and varied materials, much of it unique, on art and cultural history spanning the spectrum from ancient Egypt to contemporary art. It is a way to find books, exhibition catalogs, auction sale catalogs, artists' books, images, online journal articles, historical newspapers, archives, web archives, and more.

• Web archiving at NYARC has been developed with a grant from the Mellon Foundation to initiate a program of archiving specialized art historical resources that live on the Internet. This program stemmed from a pilot study that demonstrated that types of research materials that were originally in printed form were increasingly migrated to online versions available exclusively on the web. The conclusion was that there is an urgent need to capture these web-based resources including auction catalogs, catalogues raisonnes, and scholarly research projects as well as artist, gallery, and museum websites because otherwise there is a real and imminent danger of a “digital black hole” in the art historical record. This is a massive undertaking and NYARC is reaching out to other institutions to expand the process of web archiving in a collaborative and organized plan hosted by the Frick Art Reference Library. For more information about this important initiative please see this interview between Stephen Bury and Lily Pregill.

• Shared print reserve – in 2012, the NYARC libraries began to review and evaluate duplicate serial titles. The result has allowed us to remove select duplicate titles and in a few cases consolidate our holdings to create one complete run. Other positive results include more relief of our storage space constraints and updating of our periodical holdings leading to improved document delivery to our users. Consortial sharing and lending has been formalized and expanded through improved scanning capabilities.

NYARC has been expanding access to its collections by adding digital content to the Internet Archive and by connecting to other consortia and projects such as the Getty Research Portal.

Digital access to our collections has been improved by the creation of thematic online exhibits and creation of ebooks and other resources drawn from our collections. Here are two examples of NYARC collaborative online exhibitions (The Gilded Age and The Vienna Secession) and a slide from a thematic presentation showcasing a shared collection strength:

Finally, thinking collaboratively is an incredible asset especially as we face the challenges presented by libraries and archives today. Developing solutions together is so much easier than trying to doing it alone. We plan strategically together to support our institutional missions and needs as well as the research needs of our users. As we look ahead to the next ten years, NYARC will continue to develop sustainable and innovative programs that enhance the information services we provide to scholars worldwide. We welcome the opportunity to work together with new partners to begin new initiatives that build on past accomplishments. 

Deirdre Lawrence, Principal Librarian, Brooklyn Museum on behalf of the NYARC Directors

Decades before Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) moved to New York City and began filling his mansion with artistic masterpieces, another extraordinarily wealthy collector was populating his own mammoth structure with books and art in exactly the same location. James Lenox (1800–1880) was one of the richest men in New York in the second half of the nineteenth century, and one of its most influential philanthropists and bibliophiles. His public library stood where The Frick Collection stands today and did so from 1877 until Frick demolished it in 1912. 

The Lenox Library was one of the earliest libraries that were open to the public in New York (Reed, 18-19). Lenox had been collecting books, bibliophily, and fine art since 1845. Before he decided to formally establish his library, Lenox stored his book collection in piles in his townhouse on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 12th Street. He simply remembered where he put his books when they were added to his collection. As Lenox aged, this system became less reliable, and he decided to construct a building to house his book and art collections. (Stevens, 144-146).

For the site of his library, Lenox chose a plot of land, located on Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71st Street, on the farm he had inherited from his father. This area of New York was rural, though it was quickly developing. The farm’s hay field remained active for years after the opening of the library. 

Lenox hired the well-known and highly regarded architect Richard Morris Hunt (1827–1895) to design the building. Construction began in 1871 and ended in 1877. In January of that year, the galleries of painting and sculpture opened to the public. The manuscript and rare book rooms opened later in the same year. The remaining reading rooms did not open for access to the book collections until 1882. The library was not easily accessible. Approved visitors had to apply for admission tickets via mail before they could enter (Stern, 198). 

The Lenox Library was considered one of the most notable architectural attractions in New York at the time of its completion. It was designed in the Neo-Grec style, though critics also considered it modern classic—citing the French influence of Hunt’s École des Beaux Arts education. Some visitors felt that the façade was too severe, but others loved its grandeur and stateliness (Stern, 200). 

The building spanned the length of the city block it occupied. A central courtyard faced Fifth Avenue, flanked by two wings. The first floor rooms had twenty-four foot ceilings, and the second floor rooms had forty-foot ceilings—creating incredibly lofty and grand spaces (“The Lenox Library,” American Architect). Through the courtyard, visitors entered a large vestibule with two majestic staircases. To the south was a reading room, and to the north was a gallery. On the second floor, the main gallery ran parallel to the street. It featured large windows that overlooked Central Park and contained five arcades, paintings and sculptures were placed throughout the space. Repeating the first floor layout, a reading room was located to the south, and a gallery was located to the north. The building continued up for another half floor, with a balcony gallery running along the entire length of the courtyard (“The Lenox Library,” American Architect).

Early reviews of the library recount that after entering the south wing reading room on the first floor, the initial thing visitors saw was the Gutenberg Bible in a rosewood case (“Biblia in the Lenox Collection”). This bible was the first of its kind to enter the New World and was perhaps the greatest treasure of the library. Its display suggests that the finest books in the library’s collections were exhibited in its reading rooms and meant to be admired as much as to be used for research.

In the art galleries, visitors reported that the “individuality of the collector” was quite apparent in the collection and arrangement of the pictures (Strahan, 8). The works were not arranged according to artist or genre but rather according to the taste of Lenox. His art collection was described as “decidedly solid rather than brilliant,” an opinion that seems consistent across criticism in the past and today (Saule, 319). Highlights included works by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), Gilbert Stuart (1775–1828), Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), and Thomas Cole (1801–1848) (Lenox Library: A Guide to the Paintings and Sculpture). A large scale painting by Minhály Munkácsy (1844–1900) was added to the collection in 1879 and was greeted with much acclaim (Strahan, 8). 

The Lenox Library was not only one of the first public libraries in New York, but it was also one of the first public art exhibition spaces. Aside from the burgeoning institutions of the National Academy of Design and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Yorkers had few places to view fine art in their city. The Lenox Library helped pave the way for future cultural institutions by becoming a part of the founding collection of the New York Public Library as well as conceding its plot of land to what would eventually turn into The Frick Collection. 

To learn more about the architecture of The Lenox Library and of the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC)’s Frick Art Reference Library, look for the tours given by the Frick every year for Open House New York (OHNY) Weekend.

Eliza Goodpasture, Intern, Frick Art Reference Library

Works Cited

"Biblia in the Lenox Collection." The Art Journal 5 (1879): 36-37. JSTOR. Web. 4 Aug. 2016. 

Lenox Library: A Guide to the Paintings and Sculptures Exhibited to the Public. Printed by Order of the Trustees, 1879. Print.

Reed, Henry Hope, and Francis Morrone. The New York Public Library: The Architecture and Decoration of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. W.W. Norton and Company, 2011. Print.

Saule, Fr. "The Lenox Collection." The Auldine 8.10 (1877): 318-19. JSTOR. Web. 4 Aug. 2016. 

Stern, Robert A.M., Thomas Mellins, and David Fishman. New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age. Monacelli Press, 1999. Print.

Stevens, Henry. Recollections of James Lenox and the Formation of His Library. New York Public Library, 1951. Print.

Strahan, Edward. "Art Collection of the Lenox Library." The Art Amateur 2.1 (1879): 8. JSTOR. Web. 4 Aug. 2016. 

"The Lenox Library, New York, N.Y—Mr. R. M. Hunt Architect." American Architect and Building News 2 (1877): 280-81. HathiTust. Web. 4 Aug. 2016.

The first impression of New York...is one of repulsion at the clangor, disorder, and permanent earthquake conditions. But this time...in the centre of the cyclone, I caught the pulse of the machine, took up the rhythm...and found it simply magnificent.  —William James, 1907 (Heller, 113)

Coney Island is a 442-acre stretch of beach across the southernmost tip of Brooklyn. It is one of the less densely populated neighborhoods in New York City, but each summer, tourists and natives alike flock to its sandy shores. 

It is the site of Luna Park—formerly Astroland until 2008—which is the home of the infamous Cyclone and Wonder Wheel. Summer nights at Luna Park are at once exhilarating and disorienting—in spite of the neon lights of the rides, the smell of hot dogs and funnel cakes, and the ever-pulsing sea of people, it is easy to feel detached. 

Perhaps it is because I am a summer intern at the Frick Art Reference Library, but I have spent the duration of my internship thinking about Coney Island. Coney Island is special to me because it embodies a unique brand of grit. Initially, it draws people in with promises of leisure—a day spent in the sun and surf, and a night spent on one amusement park ride after the other. But never does it claim to be even remotely glamorous. When the park closes to the public, the employees and residents are left to deal with the useless drivel that remains. In the wake of the clamor, it is particularly un-beautiful.

This is the image of Coney Island that many artists of the American Scene movement sought to capture. Coney Island is a spectacle, but not a romantic one. 

The American Scene is perhaps best known for having produced iconic paintings such as Grant Wood’s American Gothic and Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter. Where rural American Scene artists were more interested in the Great Depression’s effect on small towns across the country, urban artists tended to focus on the illusions of grandeur within the dreamscape of a city. Overall, the American Scene was a reaction to modern European styles of the early 20th century. It was an attempt to forge a decidedly American approach to art and mould a lasting identity in the process (Shepherd, 5).

In that vein, Coney Island is a study in social realism. Its frenetic energy translates beautifully into the American Scene, which is why many New York-based artists flocked to it, the most notable of them being Reginald Marsh and Joseph Stella, among others. 

Marsh was born in Paris is 1898. He was a mixed-media artist, working with film, egg tempera, graphite, watercolors and ink over the course of his career. He enjoyed documenting his time at Coney Island, often focusing on the female bathers at the beach and indulging his affinity for public exhibitionism. His work often draws the eye of the viewer to a series of densely packed actions and movements that converge to illustrate a bigger story. 

Marsh saw burlesque and Coney Island as opportunities to paint both the human body and the human character. At Luna Park, he was also able to paint crowds and courting couples as part of a fantasy world of side-shows, merry-go-rounds, roller coasters and tunnels of love.  —Reginald Marsh (1898-1954): Urban Realist, Master of Many Media  (2-3)

Though Joseph Stella, born in Italy in 1877,  favored Italian futurism and precisionism, both he and Marsh converged on the common point of Coney Island. Stella’s love of the geometric aesthetic portrays Coney Island as frenzied and dynamic.

Stella depicts the scene at night. He demonstrates the park’s illumination by placing many dashes of light paint on a dark blue-black background. The white dots are reminiscent of the light bulbs that decorated the towers seen in the background: the wavy lines with the bright spots of color that snake across the image suggest strings of lights. In addition to the irregularly placed spots, the brightly lit wheels and ray-like brushstrokes create the impression of a turbulent spectacle of lights. The people who inhabit this park cannot be seen clearly but may have been sketched in the lower area of the painting as lines and spots, representing a crowd of people hurrying between stalls and attractions.  —Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time (Haskell, 103)

Marsh and Stella also shaped the works of artists like Paul Cadmus, Raphael Soyer, and Louis Lozowick, all of whom toyed with the same ideas of desolation within the pursuit of leisure. 

Those interested in learning about the American Scene and the way it depicts urban realities are welcome to consult the collections the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) partners—including the Frick Art Reference Library and the libraries of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Brooklyn Museum—through NYARC Discovery. The Brooklyn Museum recently hosted a three-part installation (more here) depicting the development of Coney Island over two centuries and its influence on the art world. Likewise, Robin Frank and Charles Denson’s exhibition catalog Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland is an excellent accompaniment to the installation. 

Though seemingly ephemeral, these moments in time at Coney Island have been captured and made immortal by artists of the American Scene. In a city with an ever-changing face, the old-world grime and allure of Coney Island remains the same, forever preserved by the likes of Marsh, Stella and generations of artists past and yet to come. 

Damla Bek, Intern, Frick Art Reference Library

Works Cited

Haskell, Barbara, Ortrud Westheider, and Edward Hopper. Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time. Munich: Hirmer, 2009.

Heller, Nancy, Julia Williams, and Nancy Heller. Painters of the American Scene. New York: Galahad Books, 1982.

Marsh, Reginald, and Jordan Awan. Reginald Marsh (1898-1954): Urban Realist, Master of Many Media. New York: D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc., 2008.

Newman Galleries. Reginald Marsh (1898-1954), Selected Works on Paper: April 6-17, 1990, Louis Newman Galleries. Beverly Hills, California: The Galleries, 1990.

Shepherd, Susanne Sentell. American Scene Painting: The Rise of Regionalism. Nacogdoches, Texas: Stephen F. Austin State University, 1979.

NYARC Discovery (http://discovery.nyarc.org) is a new research tool from The New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC), consisting of the libraries of the Brooklyn Museum, the Frick Art Reference Library, and The Museum of Modern Art. We are happy to introduce the integration of two important collections into NYARC Discovery – the NYARC web archives collections and images from the Frick Art Reference Library’s Photoarchive.

Web Archives: Researchers can now discover web archives along with books, journal articles, auction catalogs, traditional archives and a host of other materials while performing a single search in NYARC Discovery. Given the ephemeral nature of digital content, web archives are becoming increasingly important to document the scholarly and cultural record, making it essential to make them easily accessible to users. The NYARC web archives include six thematic collections and the consortium’s institutional website collections: 

• Art Resources

• Artists’ Websites

• Auction Houses

• Catalogues Raisonnés

• New York City Galleries

• Restitution of Lost or Looted Art

• Brooklyn Museum

• The Frick Collection

• The Museum of Modern Art

• New York Art Resources Consortium

A search in NYARC Discovery defaults to include a single full-text search result from the NYARC web archives collections. Links to the full web archives result set are provided for further exploration on the Archive-It interface. 

Each web archives collection continues to expand with the addition of new web resources. If you would like to nominate a website for consideration for inclusion in one of these collections, please submit our online nominations form. To learn more about the consortium’s web archiving program, visit http://www.nyarc.org/content/web-archiving.

Photoarchive: The Frick Art Reference Library’s Photoarchive is a study collection of more than one million photographic reproductions of works of art from the fourth to the mid-twentieth century by artists trained in the Western tradition. As of summer 2016, nearly 200,000 catalog records and over 75,000 digital images are accessible through NYARC Discovery. Cataloging and digitization of this collection is ongoing. A fun way to explore the collection is using the Virtual Browse feature, where researchers can now digitally browse the Photoarchive image files.

Built on ExLibris Primo technology, NYARC Discovery was launched earlier this year and continues to be developed to unite scholarly resources into a single search environment. NYARC Discovery is made possible through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 

Announcements will continue to be distributed as collections and features are added. Questions and comments may be sent to Lily Pregill, NYARC Coordinator and Systems Manager (pregill@frick.org).

Reflecting on the potentially transformative effect that digital technologies hold for the discipline of art history, members of several departments of the Frick Art Reference Library launched the Digital Art History Lab (DAHL) in the fall of 2014 to address the needs of art historians in a digital age. The founding mission of the DAHL is to:

• Provide researchers with the digital tools and data necessary to explore new methodologies;

• Stimulate collaborations between art historians and specialists from a variety of fields, from computer science to historical geographic information systems (GIS);

• Make the data sets amassed by the Frick Art Reference Library available to the public to encourage developers, researchers, and others to create tools that are freely available to the community.

Our first step was to create a webpage that would outline the DAHL’s founding statement and a preliminary reading list. The reading list is a primer for those interested in digital art history, providing both theoretical and practical perspectives. It also highlights digital art history projects of interest. As the DAHL broadened its scope, the website expanded to include lists of workshops, lectures, and digital art history projects it launched. 

The next step was outreach. In the spring and summer of 2015, we held informational sessions about the DAHL that included a discussion of selected digital art history tools and projects at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts (IFA), The Museum of Modern Art, and The Frick. These sessions laid the groundwork for more focused, hands-on workshops on specific tools useful for digital art history practitioners. 

The first workshop took place at The Frick in November of 2015. Dr. Titia Hulst presented Cytoscape, an open source software platform for visualizing networks. Dr. Hulst gave a brief overview of her project using Cytoscape to understand the market for contemporary art in New York in the mid-twentieth century and then walked participants through a demonstration of how they could use Cytoscape on their own data. Dr. Hulst’s workshop was followed in December by an introduction and overview of the collections management and web publishing platform Omeka by Dr. Kimon Keramides. In the spring 2016, we hosted workshops on Carto DB, a web-based mapping and data analysis tool, and Palladio, a data visualization tool. The DAHL plans to hold additional workshops this coming fall. 

In 2015, the DAHL teamed up with members of the NYC Digital Humanities group to form a new subgroup for Digital Art History (NYCDAH). As part of NYC Digital Humanities week (February 9–12, 2016), the NYCDAH held a digital art history day at the IFA. The morning session consisted of lectures and presentations, and was followed by a “Digi Café” where researchers could talk to experts in the field about the benefits of various digital tools and analytical techniques. On hand were experts in Kimono, CartoDB, Cytoscape, Zotero, and ARIES (see below). The morning session was well attended, with approximately fifty paticipants, half of whom stayed through the afternoon.

A natural outgrowth of the workshops was the offering of lectures by scholars in the field at The Frick. In April 2016,  Matthew Lincoln, University of Maryland PhD, presented his lecture Specialization and Diversity in Dutch and Flemish Printmaking: A Computational Approach, and in May 2016, Emily L. Spratt, Visiting Lecturer, Department of Art History, Rutgers University, discussed The Art of Seeing in the Digital Age: Aesthetics at the Intersection of Art and Science. These lectures attracted large audiences and posed a number of fascinating questions for the field.

Concurrently with outreach and lectures, the DAHL is actively developing new tools for art-historical research and originating its own digital projects to serve as teaching tools and models for the field. These initiatives rely on collaboration with computer programmers, engineers, and specialists in a range of disciplines, including historical GIS. Launched in 2014 with New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, our first collaborative project is ARIES: ARt Image Exploration Space. Currently a prototype, ARIES is an interactive image manipulation system that allows for the exploration and organization of fine art images (of paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, etc.) taken from multiple sources (e.g. websites, digital photographs, scans) in a virtual space. ARIES provides a novel, intuitive interface to explore, annotate, rearrange, and group art images freely in a single workspace environment, using organizational ontologies drawn from existing best practices in art history. The system allows for multiple ways to compare images, from using dynamic overlays analogous to a physical light box to advanced image analysis and feature-matching functions available only through computational image processing.

Our second collaboration, “Mapping the Frick Photograph Campaigns, 1922–1967,” is with Hunter College’s Center for Advanced Research of Spatial Information (CARSI) and Department of Geography. For this project, we hope to produce a web-based, interactive tool using GIS technologies to document the movement of Frick Art Reference Library photographers across the United States as they recorded paintings and sculptures in private collections and little-known public collections from 1922 to 1967. The resulting 35,000 negatives from these photograph expeditions, all of which have been digitized, are one of the most valuable resources in the Frick Art Reference Library’s Photoarchive, documenting many objects that either remain inaccessible to the general public or have been lost, destroyed, or altered in the intervening decades. The maps and visualizations developed by CARSI in collaboration with the DAHL will not only trace these journeys but also link location to object in an effort to identify the authorship of unattributed works (of which there are hundreds) and visualize patterns of collecting in the United States.

Recent projects for the DAHL include the creation of datasets on the provenance, attribution, and exhibition histories of the paintings of the Spanish artist El Greco (1541–1614) and the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) and visualizations from data collaboratively produced by The Frick and The Metropolitan Museum of Art from Harold Lancour’s American Art Auction Catalogues, 1785-1942. We will make these datasets freely available to the public on GitHub, Datahub, and DAHL webpages alongside pre-existing Library datasets, including the Montias Database of 17th century Dutch Art Inventories, the Spanish Artists from the Fourth to the Twentieth Century: A Critical Dictionary, and the Photoarchive.

As new projects, workshops, and lectures are developed by the DAHL, we will be posting them on our webpages. We look forward to collaborating with you and/or seeing you at an upcoming event!

Louisa Wood Ruby; Head, Photoarchive Research/Member, Digital Art History Lab Committee, Frick Art Reference Library

As represented in a recent lineup of museum exhibitions and new installations featuring Egypt and the Near East (e.g. Egypt Reborn (at the Brooklyn Museum), Ancient Egypt Transformed; Egypt: Faith After the Pharaohs), not to mention this year’s Hollywood blockbuster Gods of Egypt, the land of Pharaohs and pyramids continues to captivate our imaginations. It should come as no surprise, then, that French explorer Frédéric Cailliaud, who first traveled to Egypt in 1815 on a mission to rediscover emerald mines, became enamored with the country and its treasures (Bednarski and Harer 2013). 

Cailliaud met Bernardino Drovetti, the French vice-consul in Alexandria, upon his arrival and began to accompany him on research expeditions (Mainterot 2014, 4. While Cailliaud brought back 126 objects from these adventures that now reside in institutions such as the Musée Dobrée,the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the Louvre (Mainterot 2014, 20), his legacy lies largely with his archaeological drawings.

Throughout his time in northern Africa, Cailliaud became an expert copyist, publishing splendid plates of the scenes he encountered in three monographs: Travels in the Oasis of Thebes (1821-62), Travels to Meroe (1826), and Arts and Crafts of the Ancient Egyptians, Nubians, and Ethiopians (1837). While Cailliaud was not the first or the last European explorer to visually document his travels in northern Africa, his work, especially Travels to Meroe, was groundbreaking in its “sheer size, broad scope, and . . . particular focus on the geology of Egypt and Sudan” (Bednarski 2014, 30). Travels to Meroe also holds an esteemed place in the Brooklyn Museum’s Wilbour Library of Egyptology, as some of its volumes (1-2) make up part of the original collection of Charles Edwin Wilbour. The remaining volumes were purchased in 1944. The following year, the entirety of the Oasis of Thebes was acquired by “J.D.C.” in Paris for $50.00. Both of these works, along with Arts and Crafts, are currently available for consultation at the Library via appointment.

In 1824, France awarded Cailliaud the Legion of Honor for his exemplary finds (Bednarski and Harer 2013), and, in 1837, thirty-six of the eighty-nine plates within his last book, Arts and Crafts, were featured in one of the lengthiest spreads to date in one of the most important scholarly publications of the time, The Athenaeum (Bednarski 2014, 31). Parts of Cailliaud’s visual corpus also make up the last remaining documentation scholars have of now-lost archaeological sites, such as the tomb of Neferhotep (Bednarski and Scott 2014, 164). Andrew Bednarski, the author of extensive research on the textual portion of Arts and Crafts, called the “Harer Papers,” writes:

The historical equivalent of what Cailliaud did in today’s world would, perhaps, be a visit to known but unexplored portions of the moon: entirely possible, given the available technology, but almost inconceivable to the average person, and largely the stuff of heroes and national projects. (2014, 30).

Although Cailliaud’s work was not without its detractors (see Bednarski 2014, 32), his contributions to Egyptology are still some of the most significant to date.

Representing one of the most interesting phenomena within the world of archaeological illustration, Cailliaud’s drawings were, largely, vignettes of compiled scenes. In other words, rather than publishing illustrations of scenes and objects as they were found in situ, Cailliaud took different images from his oeuvre and placed them together to form a cohesive narrative for his viewers. He was not revolutionary in doing this either. People like John Gardner Wilkinson and Émile Prisse d’Avennes were known for this technique, and two of the most seminal European works on Egyptology, Dominique Vivant Denon’s Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt (1802) and the French government’s Description de l’Égypte (1809), are filled with these types of compositions.

Plate 65, above, is from Arts and Crafts. Here, each scene is from a different tomb in Luxor. Compiled together, however, “they illustrate points Cailliaud wanted to make both in his chapter on Egyptian embalming and, rather unexpectedly, that on hairstyles” (Bednarski and Scott 2014, 156). In a prelude to modern goals of data visualization, Cailliaud and his contemporaries pulled from their large repositories of work and presented an easily-digestible series of images with the goal of highlighting relationships. Edward Tufte, an American statistician and professor, writes that “when principles of design replicate principles of thought, the act of arranging information becomes an act of insight” (1997, 17). As Bednarski points out above, echoing Tufte, Cailliaud brought the Luxor scenes together in this arrangement to encourage his viewers to engage with the possible connections between these discrete practices.

The (in)visibility of the archaeological copyist is fascinating, especially when the line between purposeful arrangement (e.g. Plate 65) and outright alteration blurs. When creating drawings from his observations of the tomb of Rekhmire, Cailliaud famously corrected the damaged area of an elephant’s face, ostensibly “to make the scene more visually coherent for the viewer” (Bednarski and Scott 2014, 158). Similarly, Albrecht Dürer made a “gloriously wrong” engraving of a rhinoceros in 1513 that went on to be copied into guides, textbooks, and even a monument, before too many people raised objections (Tufte 1997, 71). If there were not other visual data against which to compare Cailliaud’s and Dürer’s interpretations of these items, their now-obvious use of creative license (taken with good intent or artistic hubris) rightly calls into question the objectivity many usually attribute to technical drawings.

Bednarski and Scott write that a goal of Cailliaud’s and his contemporaries was to “amass visual data that would complement words that created a context in which to understand ancient Egypt” (2014, 171). This goal of facilitating understanding seems to have trumped Cailliaud’s dedication to faithful representation. And this is not necessarily a bad thing. Authors of early archaeological drawing manuals urge objectivity, writing things such as “it should be emphasized that the recording of the architectural material must be completely objective. The world of scholarship is fully dependent upon the reliability of the published material” (Detweiler 1948, 5). Later authors, however, write that archaeological illustration is “the conscious realisation that the purpose of the illustration is to convey not only information but also an interpretation of that information” (Adkins 1989, 5) and that archaeological illustrations are “interpretive diagrams rather than attempts at realistic . . . portrayal” (Adkins 1989, 7-8). There are, of course, many well-founded arguments that data should be presented as-is. In the context of archaeological illustration, though, the progression towards greater semantic flexibility in what it means to represent data correctly provides an important access point to the creativity involved in the practice.

Research into the collections held at the Wilbour Library of Egyptology found further evidence that Cailliaud subscribed to this interpretive school of archaeological illustration, as it allowed him to present his audience with his unique (read: superior) artistic style. Below is a scan of a manuscript written by Cailliaud documenting a complaint against a contemporary illustrator, Mr. M. Hoskins. It reads:

The plans and views of the monuments in upper Nubia in my Voyage à Méroé offer differences,more or less noticeable, with the drawings in the work of M. Hoskins. I think that I should point out that these differences are all to my advantage. I know that M. Hoskins himself cannot think otherwise.” (Translation by Wilbour Library staff)

This move towards acknowledging the subjectivity inherent in design that is prescient in Cailliaud’s and others’ creative strategies is necessary for critical engagement with the contemporary practice of data visualization and its related disciplines. While completely altering data (e.g. Cailliaud “fixing” the elephant’s face) is undoubtedly an ill-advised strategy, stringing together separate pieces of information into a pattern that allows viewers to make connections is, arguably, the foundation of Linked Open Data, the Semantic Web, and user experience.

Cailliaud, among others, not only went to the moon and back by bringing ancient Egypt to the homes of the French, but he also participated in and advanced the study of data science in ways that undoubtedly contribute to current practice.

For further exploration via Arcade, our consortium's online catalog, follow the subject headings below:

Archaeological Illustration

Cailliaud

Archaeological Drawing

Information Visualization

Archaeology

A very special thanks goes to Roberta Munoz, Librarian in the Wilbour Library of Egyptology, for her extraordinary assistance with this research project.

Audrey Lorberfeld, Wilbour Library of Egyptology Intern, The Brooklyn Museum

Works Cited

Adkins, Lesley. 1989. Archaeological Illustration. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bednarski, Andrew, “The Harer Papers,” in The Lost Manuscript of Frédéric Cailliaud: Arts andCrafts of the Ancient Egyptians, Nubians, and Ethiopians (New York: The American Universityin Cairo Press, 2014), 30-44.

Bednarski, Andrew, and W. Bensen Harer. “The Explorations of Frédéric Cailliaud.” Aramco World 64,No. 1 (2013): Accessed January 1, 2016. http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/201301/the.explorations.of.fr.d.ric.cailliaud.htm.

Bednarski, Andrew, and Gerry D. Scott, “The Visual Corpus and Cailliaud,” in The Lost Manuscript of Frédéric Cailliaud: Arts and Crafts of the Ancient Egyptians, Nubians, and Ethiopians (NewYork: The American University in Cairo Press, 2014), 151-172.

Cailliaud, Frédéric. 1821. Travels in the Oasis of Thebes. Paris: Imprimerie Royale.

—. 1826. Travels to Meroe. Paris: Imprimerie Royale.

—. 1837. Arts and Crafts of the Ancient Egyptians, Nubians, and Ethiopians. Paris: DeBure.

—. n.d. Declamation De M. Frederic Cailliaud Sur L'ouvrage De M. Hoskins. MS, Wilbour Library of Egyptology.

Cailliaud, Frédéric, and Andrew Bednarski. 2014. The Lost Manuscript of Frédéric Cailliaud: Arts andCrafts of the Ancient Egyptians, Nubians, and Ethiopians. New York: The American Universityin Cairo Press.

Detweiler, Henry, A. 1948. Manual of Archaeological Surveying. New Haven: American Schools ofOriental Research.

Hoskins, George Alexander. 1835.Travels in Ethiopia, above the Second Cataract of the Nile: Exhibiting the State of That Country, and Its Various Inhabitants, under the Dominion of Mohammed Ali and Illustrating the Antiquities, Arts, and History of the Ancient Kingdom of Meroe. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, Longman.

Mainterot, Philippe, “The Life, Travels, and Works of Frédéric Cailliaud,” in The Lost Manuscript ofFrédéric Cailliaud: Arts and Crafts of the Ancient Egyptians, Nubians, and Ethiopians (NewYork: The American University in Cairo Press, 2014), 3-29.

Tufte, Edward. 1997. Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. Cheshire:Graphics Press.

Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) purchased art from only a few women during his years of collecting in New York. His principal art dealers were men such as the eminent Roland Knoedler (1856–1932) and Joseph Duveen (1869–1939). Two of Frick’s female dealers, Alice Creelman (1858–1952) and Virginia P. Bacon (1853–1919), are lesser known than their male counterparts. 

Creelman and Bacon had little in common. Creelman moved to New York from Marietta, Ohio, in 1898 and remained there until 1947. Beginning in 1882, Bacon split her time between Bordeaux, France; Turiff, Scotland; and New York. She lived full time in New York from 1914 until her death in 1919. Although both women travelled internationally, had portraits painted of them, and socialized with the New York elite, Creelman came from a modest, Midwestern family while Bacon descended from the wealthy Vanderbilt family. Their differences in background and status affected the way they approached art dealership and the motivation behind their sales.

Creelman began working in earnest as an art dealer after the death of her husband, journalist James Creelman (1859–1919), to support herself and her three children. In 1915, she facilitated the sale of Portrait of a Man in a Red Cap by Titian and Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein from Sir Hugh Lane (1875-1915) to Frick. Following this initial success, which included a commission of $26,000, Creelman sent quite a few letters to Frick. In each letter, she described a work of art she thought would interest him, and proclaimed it was the best work of the artist under discussion and that the price was surprisingly low for such a masterpiece. An example of such a letter was written by Creelman on December 9, 1915, “The two Giorgiones are wonderful, and finer than any here and of the earlier period. The color of both is said to be marvelous and very typical. They are irreproachable in their genuineness.” She added that they were “really great bargains” (Creelman, 9 Dec. 1915). Frick responded that “they do not as a whole interest” him, but he thanked her for sending him photographs of the paintings (Frick, 9 Dec. 1915). 

The letters from Creelman to Frick sound a bit desperate. Creelman wrote with such enthusiasm and hope, and Frick invariably responded with a terse, no. In more than one instance, she wrote to him about the same piece of art twice. Her offers continued even after his death in 1919 when she began addressing her letters to his daughter, Helen Clay Frick (1888–1984). Her responses to Creelman were similar to those of her father, no.

Bacon’s business style was less insistent than that of Creelman. She sold as a “Vanderbilt Heiress,” charitably offering works to a dear friend (New York Times, 1921). Bacon made it seem like the sale of artwork was not business at all. It was a gift from her to a friend where money was only a formality. In 1915, Bacon inherited a large collection of paintings and art objects from her brother-in-law Edward R. Bacon (1848–1915), who also sold art objects to Frick. This collection became part of her sales inventory. She worked hard to publicize this collection that was formerly very private. Bacon coordinated the creation of a catalog detailing the collection, which was published after her death. She donated Portrait of an Abbé by Anthony Van Dyck to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in memory of her brother-in-law. She also donated several works to war relief societies like the Red Cross (New York Times, 1919). 

While Bacon was not a professional art dealer, she acted as one in several transactions with Frick. One of the sales was for the Four Seasons by Francois Boucher in 1916. She was able to “part with them” only because he was “such good friends of my brother-in-law and all of us” (Bacon, 30 Sep. 1916). Frick’s responses to her letters were warmer than his to Creelman. After she sold Frick the Boucher paintings, he responded to a letter from her with a friendly tone, “I am in receipt of your valued favor of the 16th and regret extremely to say my engagements are such that I shall not be able to have the pleasure of calling on you this week to see the portrait of your husband. I shall, however, arrange to do so at as early a date as possible as I am quite anxious to see it” (Frick, 16 Dec. 1918). 

Creelman and Bacon were navigating New York in the early twentieth century. They made use of the expanding freedom that this time period allowed for women. They “intervened in a cultural space controlled by men,” making space for the women who would come after them (Sachko, 21). Their names are worth remembering. As an intern at the Frick Art Reference Library this past summer, I created Wikipedia entries for Creelman and Bacon in preparation for the digitization of the Art Collection Files of Henry Clay Frick funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and to ensure that their legacies are not forgotten. 

Olivia Hunter, Intern, Frick Art Reference Library

Works Cited:

“$1,840,454 Left by Vanderbilt Heiress.” New York Times 17 May 1921, p. 14. Web.

Bacon, Virginia P. Letter to Henry Clay Frick. 30 September 1916. Box 10, Folder 25. Henry Clay Frick Papers, Series I: Art Files. The Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library Archives, New York, NY. 

Creelman, Alice B. Letter to Henry Clay Frick. 9 December 1915. Box 24, Folder 9. Henry Clay Frick Papers, Series II: Correspondence. The Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library Archives, New York, NY. 

Frick, Henry Clay. Letter to Alice B. Creelman. 9 December 1915. Box 24, Folder 9. Henry Clay Frick Papers, Series II: Correspondence. Frick Art Reference Library, New York, NY.

Frick, Henry Clay. Letter to Virginia P. Bacon. 16 December 1918. Box 4, Folder 2. Henry Clay Frick Papers, Series II:Correspondence. The Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library Archives, New York, NY. 

Macleod, Dianne Sachko. Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects: American Women Collectors and the Making of Culture, 1800-1940. University of California Press: Berkeley, 2008. Print.

“Mrs. Virginia P. Bacon Dies.” New York Times 8 April 1919, p. 11. Web.

What is a web archive, and what are we archiving when we “archive the web”? What shape will the archive have? When a web archivist looks at the quality of a web capture, they are seeking to capture the functionality and behavior as well as the look and feel of the original site on the day it was archived. Compared to what archivists and librarians are used to cataloging, archiving a website is a relatively abstract concept. A website has numerous moving parts; an archived site is not a static, boxed object, like the archives we are used to.

In January 2016 I completed a 7-month internship with the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC)’s web archiving team. Over the course of my internship with the consortium, which was based at the Frick Art Reference Library and the Brooklyn Museum library, I contributed to the quality assurance (QA) of archived websites. The majority of my time was spent on archiving the image-heavy Brooklyn Museum website, in addition to archiving New York City art galleries including Godel & Co. Fine Art and Galerie St. Etienne.

Capturing all of the Brooklyn Museum website’s visual content proved to be a considerable challenge. Our initial site “crawl” failed to capture any of the images and most links were simply not working. Each of these pages had a large quantity of images and links nested and cross-linked. The QA process required following links that inevitably led to subsequent links or sets of images; often the links cross-referenced to other URLs within the website. 

A website as large as the Brooklyn Museum’s can prove unwieldy in its size and scope so I thought about ways in which I could keep a clear view of the task at hand. Ironically, I found myself searching for a way to visualize the form of a website created to showcase the visual image. As I reviewed the capture I was reminded of a discussion in an article by Ayala, Phillips and Ko titled “Current Quality Assurance Practices in Web Archiving.” The article discussed the vertical and horizontal nature of a web archive which  can also be thought of in terms of flat and deep website architecture. The horizontal refers to the surface level or breadth of the site, while the vertical axis is indicative of the depth. While the authors felt that defining an archive in these terms only was perhaps too limited, thinking of website construction in this way helped me understand the larger idea of the shape and structure of the Brooklyn Museum website. 

Shortly after reading the article “Current Quality Assurance Practices in Web Archiving”, (Ayala, et al) I experienced an “A-ha!” moment when I discovered Mozilla Tilt. Tilt is a Firefox add-on that creates a 3D visualization of any website’s architecture by presenting it as stacks of nested elements. Each element has depth and texture corresponding to the webpage’s rendering. When I used Tilt to view the pages in the Brooklyn Museum web archive, not only was I was able to see a pictorial representation of the archived site’s architecture, but I could also manipulate the rendering and turn it like an object in space. For me, this was entirely illuminating. As I proceeded with the QA process of the Brooklyn Museum website, resolving the problems and restoring missing images and links to the archive, the visualization process enabled me to keep a clear view in my head of the website’s construction and hierarchies. Having a physical concept of the site helped me achieve a clearer concept of the overall project 

Traditional libraries and archives are being transformed physically and theoretically. In the midst of the sea change that is occurring in the way we handle, create and store our data, it is crucial that we change the shape of our thinking. Web archiving is just one – relatively - new development in the library and museum world.

Chantal Sulkow, Collections Manager, The Center for Books Arts; Adjunct Faculty Cataloger, NYU Division of Libraries; and former NYARC Web Archiving Intern

Central Park’s seven hundred-plus acres make up a nearly perfect rectangle with north, south, east, and west ends, smack dab in the middle of the Manhattan street grid. In the city, no one can escape the park. And even in the park, no one can escape the city, apparent in the skylines of 59th Street, Fifth Avenue, Central Park West, and 110th Street.

American Impressionists—William Merritt Chase, Willard Leroy Metcalf, and William Glackens in particular—captured this relationship between the park’s tall green trees of the park and the city’s taller gray skyline in paint. Indeed, what better subject for a landscape artist than pasture and urban life in one? Of course, Central Park is anything but truly pastoral. Pipes and concrete lie under its ponds and lawns (Milller, 13). But neither was the garden at Giverny; Claude Monet employed gardeners, one of whom trimmed and dusted the waterlilies (“Waterlilies”). A touch of irony and artifice was par for the Impressionist course.

I think that Chase, Metcalf, and Glackens saw the beauty and pretense of Central Park in a way that I do not. Though, I have walked its paths for what feels like a thousand times. My Central Park is subdivided and functional—the Conservatory Garden for strolls with my fiancé and the reservoir for head-clearing stomps. The Central Park that Chase, Metcalf, and Glackens saw is more than the sum of its parts. I suspect that by including the skyline in their art, they intended to remind the viewer that the park is as constructed as the city itself and no less lovely for that.

New York paintings marked William Merritt Chase’s shift from old masterly style to a modern realism and Central Park was as refined as the artist’s own aesthetic (Weinberg). Long, wide, and not too grainy brushstrokes bring out the manicured grass in The Common, Central Park , yet untouched by the stylish people whom Chase often depicted (Weinberg). The abundance of plain grass relieves the viewer’s eye like the creators of the park intended the grand lawns to relieve the souls of overcrowded New Yorkers. The grass draws the gaze of the viewer upward, to find Navarro Flats on the southern skyline (Pisano, 72). The rusty red color makes the buildings pop as the green foliage, in a slight semicircle, encloses them. Rather than a skyline bursting with new towers and grand homes, the focus is symmetry and order.

Early Spring Afternoon—Central Park hangs high above several other American Impressionist artworks on the fifth floor of the Brooklyn Museum. A visitor sitting on the soft stool looking up at the painting has the opposite experience of Willard Leroy Metcalf, who looked down and across the park from his apartment at 69th Street and Central Park West to make the painting (Carbone, 150). The scene is pink and slightly hazy. Four horizontal bands of light and dark divide the composition: dark purple with dark green grass, beige trails with yellow trees, purple shrubbery, and beige/blue skyline. That third band of purple shrubs cuts off the skyline from the park. Fifth Avenue is the backdrop in the hazy east.

William Glackens inherited the Impressionists’ loose brushwork and angled landscapes, but he flirted with the colors and radical forms of Fauvism (Gerdts, 90)—and that influence comes through in Skaters, Central Park. In Impressionist style, the shadows are colored rather than modulated in grayscale; they all fall in slightly different directions. The ice, dark and cloudy in the background, seems to recede farther than the apartment buildings of Central Park West, which lean slightly leftward and forward. Those buildings are about as bright and warmly-colored as the skaters fighting the cold. Even the snow has the look of mint ice cream. Glackens crops the full expanse of the rink and the height of the apartments, which already soared at the beginning of the twentieth century. The painting focuses on the colors and what Glackens can do with the forms, rather than the city park scene itself.

North: The Great Gap?

Chase and Glackens—though not Metcalf, who generally disliked urban scenes (Carbone, 150)—made many more Central Park paintings. Chase created Bank of a Lake in Central Park; Terrace of the Mall, Central Park; and Park Bench as well as The Common, Central Park. Glackens painted Central Park, Winter and May Day, Central Park. None of these depict the skyline of 110th Street. Other artists from the same period, such as Robert Henri, Louis Eilshemius, Colin Campbell Cooper, Frederick Childe Hassam, Gifford Beal, Johann Berthelsen, and Arthur Clifton Goodwin painted the park too but not the north. That was no-man’s land.

Frederick Law Olmsted, the Central Park architect, decried the “crude and ugly restlessness of the ill-composed skylines” and its “inharmonious” association with the pastoral oasis (Olmsted, 206). Maybe the American Impressionists considered 110th Street particularly disagreeable. The segment of Central Park between 106th Street and 110th Street was, in fact, an afterthought. The commissioners acquired that uppermost parcel of land in 1863 after the rest of the park’s construction and the comptroller Andrew Green limited its landscaping budget (Waxman). In the time of Chase, Metcalf, and Glackens, the neighborhood north of 110th Street was upper-middle class and heavily Jewish, never as glamorous as 59th Street, Fifth Avenue, or Central Park West (Gross).

The city as a whole may have been incidental to Impressionist paintings of Central Park, many of which exclude the skyline altogether. But I think that Chase, Metcalf, and Glackens proved prescient by including any buildings in their views of the park. Perhaps, some artist of tomorrow will cross the final frontier and paint 110th St.

Amanda Brooks-Kelly, Administration Intern, Frick Art Reference Library

Works Cited

Carbone, Teresa A. An American View: Masterpieces from the Brooklyn Museum. London: D. Giles Ltd., 2006. Print.

Gerdts, William H. and Santis, Jorge H. William Glackens. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. Print.

Gross, Max. “Across 110th” New York Post. NYP Holdings, Inc., 14 June 2007.  Accessed 19 August 2015. Web.

Miller, Sara Cedar. Central Park, An American Masterpiece. New York: H.N. Abrams, 2003. Print.

Olmsted, F. L., Jr., Ed. Frederick Law Olmsted, Landscape Architect, 1822-1903. F. L. Olmsted and T. K. Hubbard. New York: B. Blom., 1970. Reprint of 1922 edition.

Pisano, Ronald G. and Lane, Carolyn K. Complete Catalogue of Known and Documented Works by William Merritt Chase, V. 2: Landscapes in Oil. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Print.

“Waterlilies by Claude Monet, 1905.” BBC.co.uk. Accessed 29 September 2015. Web.

Waxman, Sarah. “The History of Central Park.” NY.com. Mediabridge Infosystems Inc. Accessed 13 August 2015. Web.

Weinberg, H. Barbara. “William Merritt Chase (1849–1916),” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accessed 27 July 2015. Web.