When first-timers visit the Frick Collection in New York City, they may not have any idea the place is fresh off a 5-year, $330 million renovation and expansion. Set to reopen officially on Thursday, April 17, the Frick is far more likely to make those visitors feel like they’ve stepped into the past.
That’s a good thing—the charm of this smaller museum has always been its ability to disrupt the space-time continuum.
Once the residence of Gilded Age millionaire Henry Clay Frick, the building is now the best kind of time machine. Not only do you get to see the world-class art chosen by the robber baron, his wife Adelaide Childs Frick, and daughter Helen Clay Frick, but you also get to see the family’s splendid 1910s mansion created by the firm of Carrère and Hastings, two of the greatest architects and interior designers of the day.
Paintings by Rembrandt, Whistler, El Greco, Fragonard, Holbein, and other masters are fixed to walls swathed in hand-woven French damask and velvet below elaborately molded, muraled, and coffered ceilings and set near exquisite ancient vases and fine furnishings of all sorts.
It never took much imagination to get a feel for what life among these masterpieces would be like—and that hasn’t changed post-renovation, despite the addition of roughly 27,000 square feet of new construction and 60,000 square feet of repurposed space. That all amounts to the first comprehensive upgrade of the Frick’s buildings since it opened to the public some 90 years ago.
There are, of course, some changes, and they’re noteworthy enough to encourage past visitors to circle back. Here’s an overview of some of the improvements made to the Frick Collection—as well as a look at some of the museum’s timeless wonders.
Art Hidden in Plain Sight
One of the surprises of the Frick is that major works are everywhere—even in the hallways between galleries. Right as you enter the museum you’ll see an exquisite little painting by Tiepolo that shows Perseus saving Andromeda from a sea monster. Not far away, two of the collection’s luminous Vermeers flank a handsome portrait by Murillo on a wall (pictured above) facing a stairway.
Gainsborough for Digestion, Fragonard for Fraternizing
The first galleries are set in the mansion’s former dining room, sitting room, and library, with art conducive to those settings, even if most of the furnishings are no longer in the rooms.
In the dining room are a series of elegant, bewigged women painted by Thomas Gainsborough, excellent dinner companions for a stately meal. The room has been refreshed, including with new handwoven silk wall coverings, but remains blessedly unchanged from before.
Ditto for the sitting room with its suite of Fragonard wall murals (pictured above), a gift from France’s King Louis XV to his mistress, Madame du Barry, who rejected them as too old-fashioned for her 18th-century taste. That put the murals on a complicated path of ownership until Frick scooped them up. The library, another soothing space, contains art as well as hundreds of handsome leather-bound tomes.
The living room (pictured above) features several of the collection’s star attractions, including El Greco’s shockingly pink-robed Saint Jerome, Bellini’s wondrous St. Francis in the Desert, and Holbein’s portraits of Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell.
All of these works hang exactly where Frick himself put them, and you can see his sense of humor: Political rivals More and Cromwell stare each other down from either side of the fireplace.
Fine Flatware Where Art Cannot Go
In 2011, the Frick decided to enclose a portico and use it as a space to display fine porcelain. That exhibit has been reimagined by Marie-Laure Buku Pongo (pictured above), the Frick’s assistant curator of decorative arts. Buku Pongo has taken the museum’s highly coveted Meissen porcelain—plates and decorative objects created by the German manufacturer that pioneered a method called hard paste porcelain in the 18th century—and set them on the walls in gallery-style formations.
They’re interspersed with ancient Chinese pieces and other porcelains, some in display cases. “Porcelains are forged in high heat,” Buku Pongo explained to me at the Frick’s press preview. “So unlike wooden furniture or paintings, they can withstand being in direct sunlight, like this area.” The sunshine and the spectacular porcelains make this little hallway an unusually pleasant place to linger.
Flowers That Will Never Die
When the Frick originally opened to the public in 1935, curators filled the mansion with fresh flowers to mark the occasion. For this reopening, the museum did something even more extravagant: It commissioned Ukrainian artist Vladimir Kanevsky to fill the galleries with astonishingly vivid porcelain flowers, like the ones pictured above.
The porcelain blooms lend a celebratory aspect to the reopening, and will be in place until October 6—if no visitor accidentally breaks them, that is. I was surprised by how unprotected these delicate sculptures are; many are positioned right off major walkways. The flowers aren’t cheap, either, as you’ll discover when you visit the new, second floor gift shop, where take-home versions go for between $3,000 and $10,000 apiece.
The West Gallery
The most museum-like of the galleries was custom-built in 1915 just to house art. This long, rectangular room has newly replaced skylights and green velvet wallpaper, making the space look better than it has in years. A highlight of the Frick, the West Gallery displays works by Rembrandt, Velázquez, Goya, and Vermeer, among others.
Also on the building’s ground floor: an interior fountain area, known as the Garden Court, and Whistler portraits so alive you wouldn’t be surprised if the subjects walked right off the canvas.
The Grandest of Stairways
In its previous iteration, the Frick pretty much began and ended on the first floor, with the majestic staircase to the second story roped off to visitors. No more. Now, after inspecting the historic organ keyboard in an annex next to the stairs, visitors are invited to get a closer look at the sculptural organ pipes built into the stairwell. Ascend the marble steps, with their elaborately filigreed railings, to reach the once-private family quarters. (Alas, the organ is not currently playable, but here’s hoping that will change in the future).
I recommend going up to the second level the way the Frick family did. Alternatively, Selldorf Architects have done a nice job of seamlessly slotting in a modern two-story addition to the uptown side of the building, installing a groovy new Breccia Aurora marble staircase. Walk up that one and you’ll come to a café—a first for the Frick—and gift store before reentering the mansion, which breaks the illusion a bit.
Note that a new gallery for temporary exhibits is also in the addition. The Frick’s first temporary exhibit (opening June 18) will showcase three love-letter paintings by Jan Vermeer. Next to the space for temporary exhibits is the institution’s first dedicated education room, which will host regular art-making sessions and lectures. In the basement, underneath the Frick’s garden, there’s a state-of-the-art auditorium for performances and lectures.
The Boucher Room
The private sitting room of Adelaide Childs Frick (pictured above) is likely the first room you’ll enter upon ascending the stairs. Designed to house a series of allegorical paintings on the arts and sciences by François Boucher (1703–1770), the room was disassembled after Adelaide’s death and moved for display downstairs.
But it’s now back in its original spot, looking royally cozy with the blue in the paintings offset by blue silk curtains and couches, fine Sèvres porcelains, and rococo inlaid wood furnishings.
The Walnut Room
The burnished wood walls of what was Henry Clay Frick’s bedroom are now the setting for two of the collection’s most recognized paintings: the portrait of businessman Nicolaes Ruts by Rembrandt and the anatomically oddball rendering of the Comtesse d’Haussonville by Ingres (why is her right arm coming out of her rib cage?). Neither painting hung in the room when Frick slept here—both entered the collection after his death. But the placement seems appropriate, joining Frick the man with two of the most famous pieces in the collection that bears his name.
Small Wonders
The other sitting rooms, guest rooms, and bedrooms on the second floor have been converted to galleries, allowing the museum to double the number of items from the collection it now displays. In Frick’s former office are a collection of Early Italian altarpieces—gleaming with gold leaf—collected by his daughter Helen.
My favorite displays show the tiny treasures of the museum, such as intricate clocks and dozens of commemorative medals (pictured above), some with stories to tell, like the one of Cupid reading poetry to a lion, an allegory for love conquering even the most savage beasts.
With this doubling of the viewable collection—combined with the approach of spring, bringing greenery and blossoms to the Frick’s gardens—visitors should plan on spending more time here than before. To soak it all in, give it 2.5 hours rather than the 1.5 the museum used to take. I can think of few finer places in the city for lingering.
Set to reopen April 17, the Frick Collection requires timed tickets purchased in advance. Admission costs $30 for adults, $22 for seniors ages 65 and older, $17 for students with ID, and nothing for kids ages 18 and younger.
For more information or to buy tickets, go to Frick.org.