12/04/2023
https://www.frick.org
Is IT "Fricking" or "fracking"?
Why I chose not to be a Frick, and that is a descendant of "Henry Clay" (by all accounts -- a terrible man) a Frick, like the museum he named after himself (not his children, nor the children who died -- there were two -- nor his wife but Henry, himself).
My mother, who is -- a Frick -- had only one defense. It was the supposed realizaiton that Henry Clay Frick, himself, selected the paintings and supposedly retired at around 30 years old (the average age of expectancy would've been 48 years old at the time) to do so.
I believe I made my mother upset when I read to her from a generic tour guide of NYC in the 1990s that Henry Clay was the nastiest of the robber barons, including his partner Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie, after all, created many institutions that helped folks, particularly those in the arts and academia.
And sure enough, he (Henry Clay Frick) was enough but then, again for my mother he was too much.
Indeed,the great anarchist Emma Goldman supposedly told her husband that it would be significant and beneficial for many people if Henry died. And accordingly, he did go uptown and tried to kill Henry Clay Frick.
He failed. But rather Emma the very hefty sentence, she paid the price. Indeed, a graduate student of mine wrote a wonderful piece on Emma's ex-patriation (not that of her husband and the timing corresponded nicely with that of Emma Goldman's expatriation.
I am planning on visiting the Henry Clay Frick Frick Museum some time soon. The last time I visited the paintings were not enough to set off the lies and misinformation of the Frick Museum itself. Imagine that. Or don't be surprised by that.
The time before I visited was with my mother, who has long passed, though when I was four years before my 18th year, my mother was insistent. She did not want me corrupted by that "East Coast Establishment" her own father felt existed. Before farming CA, he farmed food in Iowa -- between the two great wars -- as they called them, in hindsight.
My mother was a great believer in foresight and hindsight. And I was dutiful. Therefore, where she went and what and where she deemed appropriate for my age I didn't argue (or not arguments that lasted very long, I am proud to admit.
After all, she graduated from Berkeley when it was called CAL, not the name of they city that hosted the founding college of this great university, let alone UCLA or Southern CAL.
To be fair, my mother let me leave home at 16 years old, and I was still grateful for that. Now that was not so grateful that I didn't have to inform her when the knowledge about Frick's collecting days were behind hime. One of my closest friends -- Martha Campbell understood -- for different reasons -- that Henry Clay Frick was not a man to work for. And to be sure, the Frick collections remain pristine but the museum doesn not (I am told).
Who knows? What I do know is https://collections.frick.org/collections/124/painting/objects does hold some great paintings and whether or not we need to know what the person who had the money to collect them counts is a different matter.
