Patricia J. Barnett (born 26 November 1942) served as the sixth Chief Librarian and second Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian of the

Frick Art Reference Library The Frick Art Research Library (formerly known as the Frick Art Reference Library) is the art library of the Frick Collection in New York City. The library, founded at the Henry Clay Frick House in 1920 by Helen Clay Frick, offers access to mater ...

Career

In March 1970, Barnett began her career at

The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the third-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million v ...

, New York. She served as the institution's Museum Librarian for Information Resources and the Director of the Clearinghouse on Art Documentation and Computerization, described as "a pre-Internet resource shared among the international archives, museum, and library information communities." She joined the staff of the Frick Art Reference Library in January 1995, becoming the second Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian. During her tenure, she oversaw the development and implementation of the online library catalog FRESCO (Frick Research Catalog Online) and the electronic conversion of the auction and book records. She was a co-founder of the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC), a collaboration of three leading art research institutions in New York City: the Frick Art Reference Library, the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

Libraries & Archives, and

The Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, and includes over 200,000 works of arc ...

Library. From 2000 to 2006, the Library hosted "Dialogues on Art," a series of annual panel discussions addressing issues of art-historical interest such as the art market, another project overseen by Barnett. She also spearheaded an exhibition program showcasing the institutions holdings. Finally, the Library's holdings dramatically increased under her direction. Among the major acquisitions were major photograph collections from Knoedler & Company, The Museum of Modern Art, and the

Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: ), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in document ...

and a valuable collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century auction catalogues sold by the Paris-based Heim Gallery Library in 2005.The Frick Collection (2008). Since her retirement from the Frick Art Reference Library in 2008, she has worked as an independent consultant.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barnett, Patricia 1942 births 20th-century American librarians 20th-century American women librarians Employees of the Frick Art Research Library Living people 21st-century American women librarians 21st-century American librarians Librarians from Pennsylvania People from Philadelphia People associated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art