New York (May 21, 2021)—The Frick Collection’s popular video series Cocktails with a Curator has been recognized as an Honoree by the 25th Annual Webby Awards for Best Virtual & Remote Experiences: Arts & Culture. This significant recognition conferred by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences is given to only the top 20% of the nearly 13,500 projects considered. Established in 1996 and named the “Internet’s highest honor” by The New York Times, the Webby is the leading international award denoting excellence on the Internet. This year’s Webby Awards received entries from all fifty states as well as seventy countries worldwide. This year the Academy introduced the Virtual & Remote category, to recognize the substantial number of digital experiences that emerged during the pandemic.
This week, Cocktails was also recognized by the Global Fine Arts Awards (GFAA), which was created to recognize the best curated art and design installations around the world. The judging criteria applied to GFAA awards, now in existence for seven years, are innovation and excellence in exhibition design, historical context, educational value, and public appeal. The Frick was named a joint honoree in a new and highly competitive category: Best Digital Exhibition or Online Education Program. The thirty 2021 winners and honorees reflect cultural achievements across eighteen countries and five continents.
Comments Xavier F. Salomon, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator of the Frick and one of the series’ hosts, “Cocktails with a Curator has been an incredibly rewarding project, enabling the Frick to stay connected with our public and engage new audiences from around the world.” He continued, “The positive response from viewers every week has been astounding. While we reopened in March at Frick Madison, our temporary location during the renovation of the museum and library’s permanent home on East 70th Street, we will continue to present new episodes through July 18, and are currently working on an upcoming publication inspired by the program. The team that has made this series possible—including members of our Curatorial, Audio-Visual, Editorial, and Communications and Marketing departments—is thrilled this series has been recognized and offers congratulations to other honorees in what was an inspiring year of exciting innovations in digital programming.”
Since April 2020, Cocktails with a Curator has streamed every Friday at 5:00 p.m. EST on the museum’s YouTube channel, presented by Xavier F. Salomon, Curator Aimee Ng, or Assistant Curator of Sculpture Giulio Dalvit. Each episode presents insightful and entertaining commentary about a single object or related group from the Frick’s holdings, pairing the talk with a suggestion for a complementary cocktail or mocktail. The series, now with over 1.4 million views, has featured more than fifty works of art thus far, including paintings such as the Frick’s beloved St. Francis in the Desert by Bellini and Fragonard’s Progress of Love series, in addition to objects such as the museum’s rare seventeenth-century Mughal carpets. The curators offer in-depth stories on each of the works, sharing fresh insights from a present-day perspective. Exciting, never-before-presented research and findings have also been shared with audiences on several episodes. Cocktail recipes can be found at frick.org, and all past episodes are available to view on YouTube. Information about upcoming episodes is also available in our biweekly e-newsletter.
Select episodes of Cocktails with a Curator are supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ayesha Bulchandani, and First Republic Bank.
