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Frick v Guggenheim: Image Search

The Frick, despite being 50% library, has ineffective catalog entries for their art objects. It is very difficult to find an image unless you know the title or artist. The Guggenheim, on the other hand, has one of the more searchable catalogs because each object is described in paragraph form. Those paragraphs, which often contain descriptive phrases, are also searched--in addition to the MARC catalog records. However, the people who write the paragraphs are not writing them for this purpose (of being searched) so many keywords and phrases (and tags) which would be appropriate descriptors are not included. Even the Guggenheim's catalog would benefit greatly by tagging.

Tag:Religious

Search the Frick collection for "religious," and you do not find this lovely painting, above (or any). Search "Greco" and you will find the three El Greco paintings in the Frick Collection, but their descriptions are not searchable. How are you supposed to find an image if you don't know the artist or the title? Keyword search doesn't return anything either. What are the first five words you would use to search the Frick catalog to find any random image. Painterly? no results. Red? There is no keyword "red" on its own, but oddly there is one keyword red field Moghul rugs which will give you 8 of those rugs, the only "RED" objects in the Frick Collection. (As Genco would say, if you can't find it it doesn't exist.)

You also won't find this rug under "oriental rug" or "persian rug" (or "rugs, Persian," although that term brings up four of the other seven "red field Moghul rugs"... you would think that all eight of them would be Persian.) Perhaps that's too critical, but there are a lot of librarians at the Frick.