The Frick Collection will reopen its East 70th Street mansion in April following a four-year renovation project, the institution announced yesterday, October 30.
Until March of this year, the museum’s European fine and decorative arts and Old Master paintings collection was being temporarily housed in the uptown Breuer building — a site that was home to the Whitney Museum of American Art until 2014 and later to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s contemporary art exhibitions for a brief period.
Last year, the Frick said it planned to reopen in 2024. But a spokesperson told Hyperallergic today that the museum used the extra time to complete additional work, including the restoration of the Gilded Age building’s facades.
“It’s always difficult to predict the timing of projects of this scale,” the spokesperson said. “It’s been important to us that the project not be rushed, as we want to achieve a standard of outstanding quality.”
The restored mansion was originally built in 1914 as the personal residence of namesake steel industrialist and art patron Henry Clay Frick during the final years of his life. Frick specified in his will that the mansion and personal art collection were to become a public gallery space. The Frick Collection’s permanent holdings have grown to over 1,800 works of European fine and decorative art including painting and sculpture since it opened its doors to the public in 1935.
The museum said the renovations led by Selldorf Architects would improve accessibility throughout the galleries, modernize conservation spaces, add new galleries for special exhibitions, create educational spaces, and open public access to the second floor of the mansion, which will be used to display “small-scale” works including sculpture and Renaissance and Impressionist paintings. This expanded second floor, according to the Frick, will allow for 25% more of the permanent collection to be on view to the public.
The institution’s inaugural season at the renovated building will begin with an exhibition of rarely seen drawings from the 15th through 19th centuries, usually too delicate to be exposed to light, by artists including Edgar Degas and Francisco Goya, on view in the first-floor Cabinet Gallery until the summer.
Starting in June, the Frick said it will exhibit three Vermeer paintings in its new first-floor gallery spaces, including the Dutch Golden Age artist’s iconic “Mistress and Maid” (1664–67). (The museum owns three works by the painter.)
The Frick will also reopen with a six-month-long display of commissioned porcelain sculptures by Ukrainian-born artist Vladimir Kanevsky across the first- and second-floor galleries. On April 26, the museum plans to launch a week-long festival of classical and contemporary music.
