Prelude to a Feud: Helen Frick, Walter Read Hovey, and the University of Pittsburgh

In June 2024, Frick Pittsburgh presented a symposium titled “Forging a Legacy: Collecting in the Gilded Age” to coincide with the exhibition Vermeer, Monet, Rembrandt: Forging the Frick Collections in Pittsburgh and New York (April 7-July 12, 2024). For the occasion, Taylor and Rhor were invited to speak on the fraught history of Helen Clay Frick and the University of Pittsburgh as part of a broader panel exploring aspects of Helen’s life and patronage. Their paper drew on archives from the Frick and the University of Pittsburgh to better understand the prehistory of the Frick Fine Arts Building and the Frick collection it was planned to contain, exploring how this vision was prefigured by the exhibition-making practices of Walter Read Hovey and Virginia Lewis in what was then the Department of Fine Arts in the Cathedral of Learning. For this colloquium, they will reprise this paper within the department as we approach our centenary.