Art in the Frick Collection : Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts

In Art in the Frick Collection, museum director Charles Ryskamp takes readers on a tour of the Frick's permanent collection, including paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer as well as Renaissance sculpture and 18th-century French furnishings. Ryskamp begins with a biography of Henry Clay Frick, detailing his development as an art collector, and then guides us through the evolution of the museum, which is housed in the Fifth Avenue mansion Frick himself helped design and in which he lived until his death. Large (in some cases full-page) photographs of art are naturally the focus here, but the accompanying text, written by the museum's curators, elucidates both the work and the artists who rendered it. Illustrating why Frick's collection is a model for many other notable American art collections, this graceful book is worth the price of admission.