Julia Frey (born 1943, Louisville, Kentucky) is an American writer, biographer, and scholar whose work focuses on 19th- and 20th-century French art and literature. She is the author of Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life (1994), which received a PEN Center USA award for Creative NonfictionLos Angeles Times, “PEN Center West Announces Literary Awards for 1995.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-05-21-bk-4099-story.html and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography/Autobiography.National Book Critics Circle, “1994 Awards.” https://www.bookcritics.org/past-awards/1994/ Her other notable works include Balcony View: A 9/11 Diary (2011; revised 2021)Kirkus Reviews, Balcony View: A 9/11 Diary. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/julia-frey/balcony-view/IndieReader, “Balcony View: A 9/11 Diary.” https://indiereader.com/book_review/balcony-view-a-9-11-diary/ and Venus Betrayed: The Private World of Édouard Vuillard (2019).Paris Musées, “Venus Betrayed.” https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/en/node/963126#infos-principales Frey's papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin,Harry Ransom Center, Julia Bloch Frey Papers finding aid. https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00457 and her handwritten Balcony View diary is part of the collection of the 9/11 Memorial Museum.9/11 Memorial & Museum, collection search: https://www.911memorial.org/search

Early life and education

Frey attended the Kentucky Home for Girls and graduated from Waggener High School in 1961. She earned two bachelor's degrees from Antioch College, in Design and French, followed by a master's degree from the University of Texas at Austin and MPhil and PhD degrees in French literature from Yale University.Yale Alumni Magazine, “Frey PhD.” https://yalealumnimagazine.org/blog_posts/3267-november-2019University of Colorado Boulder, “Julia Frey.” https://www.colorado.edu/frenchitalian/julia-frey

Career

Frey taught at Yale University, Université de Paris I, Brown University, and Sarah Lawrence College before joining the University of Colorado Boulder, where she taught French and art history from 1976 to 2001. She took early retirement in 2002 and became professor emerita.

Her 1994 biography, Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life, won the 1995 PEN Center USA West Literary Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography/Autobiography. The biography drew on previously untapped letters and family documents and received reviews in publications including The New York Times, The Independent, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews.Publishers Weekly, “Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life.” https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780670808441The Independent, “Short and Not Sweet: Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life.” https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/book-review-short-and-not-sweet-toulouselautrec-a-life-julia-frey-weidenfeld-pounds-25-1412821.htmlKirkus Reviews, “Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life,” by Julia Frey. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/julia-frey/henri-de-toulouse-lautrec/The New York Times, “Ugly Was Beautiful, Too.” https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/04/books/ugly-was-beautiful-too.html?searchResultPosition=1 Frey subsequently curated Toulouse-Lautrec exhibitions, including Toulouse-Lautrec from the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the Denver Art Museum in 1999Harry Ransom Center, Julia Bloch Frey Papers: A Preliminary Inventory of Her Papers in the Manuscript Collection. https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/pdf/00457.pdf and Toulouse-Lautrec, uno sguardo dentro la vita at Rome's Museo Vittoriano in 2003–2004.

Frey contributed essays to exhibition catalogues, including the Museum of Modern Art's 1985 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Images of the 1890s and the San Diego Museum of Art's 1988 Toulouse-Lautrec: The Baldwin Collection.Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Images of the 1890s. https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1841_300298303.pdfSmithsonian Libraries, Toulouse-Lautrec: The Baldwin Collection, San Diego Museum of Art. https://www.si.edu/object/toulouse-lautrec-baldwin-collection-san-diego-museum-art-nora-desloge-essays-phillip-dennis-cate%3Asiris_sil_379107 She also lectured on Toulouse-Lautrec and French art, appearing as a guest lecturer at institutions including the Chrysler Museum of ArtThe Virginia-Pilot, “Toulouse-Lautrec: A Special Exhibit at the Chrysler Museum of Art.” https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1997/vp971022/10220038.htmThe Virginia-Pilot, “Chrysler's Turnaround: Masterpiece Museum Has Tightened Belt, Responded to Public Taste.” https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1997/vp971026/10260032.htm and the Art Institute of Chicago,Art Institute of Chicago, “Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre / Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Storyteller.” https://archive.artic.edu/toulouse_lautrec/events.html and at an Alliance française event in Washington, D.C.The Washington Post, “Toulouse Lautrec dinner at the Alliance Francaise. Guest lecturer: historian Julia Frey.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1998/05/06/on-the-fridge/2a2464a1-ce0b-4044-bc38-aabb47736706/

Personal life

Frey was married to American novelist Ronald Sukenick, whom she met while both were teaching at the University of Colorado Boulder. The couple married in 1992 after having lived together for several years.The Guardian, “Ronald Sukenick.” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/sep/22/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries Sukenick had been diagnosed with inclusion body myositis, a progressive degenerative muscle disease, and his illness increasingly shaped their lives together. He died in New York in July 2004.Los Angeles Times, “Ronald Sukenick, 72.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jul-28-me-sukenick28-story.html

In 2000, Frey and Sukenick moved from Boulder to New York, settling in a specially equipped apartment in Battery Park City across from the World Trade Center. From their Battery Park City apartment, Frey and Sukenick witnessed the September 11, 2001 attacks. Frey kept a diary documenting the attacks and the six months that followed while caring for her increasingly disabled husband; the diary became Balcony View: A 9/11 Diary, published in 2011.

After Sukenick's death in 2004, Frey married Dutch geophysicist Guust Nolet. Nolet was then a professor at Princeton University. The couple later moved to the French Riviera, where Frey published Venus Betrayed: The Private World of Édouard Vuillard, a biography of the French painter Édouard Vuillard.

Bibliography

Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life (1994) Balcony View: A 9/11 Diary (2011) Venus Betrayed: The Private World of Édouard Vuillard (2019)

References