The Sleeve Should Be Illegal & Other Reflections on Art at the Frick

by Michaelyn Mitchell (Editor), Ian Wardropper (Preface), Adam Gopnik (Foreword)

A cultural haven for museumgoers in New York and beyond, The Frick Collection holds masterpieces by some of the most celebrated artists in the Western tradition―among them Bellini, Gainsborough, Goya, Rembrandt, Vermeer and Whistler―installed in a Gilded Age mansion on Fifth Avenue.

This book includes 61 reflections on the Frick’s preeminent collection, with the contributors writing about an artwork that has personal significance, sharing how it has moved, challenged, puzzled or inspired them. Each text is accompanied by an illustration of the artwork. For example, writer Jonathan Lethem tells how he started going to the Frick as a teenager, to gaze at Hans Holbein’s portraits of Thomas Cromwell and Sir Thomas More. Historian Simon Schama revels in Turner’s Mortlake Terrace: Early Summer Morning, which reminds him of his own childhood growing up next to the River Thames. This engaging anthology attests to the inspirational power of art and reminds us that there is no one way to look.