Inside the Frick Collection, known for its Vermeers and its regal Carrère & Hastings–designed mansion, is a vast photography archive.
Some 20,000 green boxes — each about the size of a large coffee table book — are neatly lined up, row after row, stacked high on shelving and packed with folders that are, in turn, filled with pictures of artworks. Immaculately typed pages of information about each work are tucked alongside the photographs. The room smells exactly as it’s supposed to: musty but clean, and reassuringly proper.
More than one million works — far beyond what’s in the Frick’s own collection — are documented in the archive, and although the public isn’t allowed in the stacks, any of the contents can be requested and viewed in the wood-paneled Frick Art Reference Library.
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