The Frick Collection will leave its brutalist temporary home on Madison Avenue in New York and return to Henry Clay Frick’s historic Fifth Avenue mansion in 2024. On Friday, April 21, the institution revealed details of its return to its home of long-standing, which is undergoing $160 million for renovation and expansion designed by Annabelle Selldorf who underwent four different formulations before receiving approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission of New York. The mansion will reopen to the public at the end of 2024.
On March 3, 2024, the Frick will cease operations in the Marcel Breuer-designed building at East 75th Street and Madison Avenue that it used as its base. since early 2021. The fate of the Breuer Building – which for decades was home to the Whitney Museum of American Art and, following that museum’s move to the Meatpacking District, a temporary outpost of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dubbed the Met Breuer-is unknown.
“Our residency at Frick Madison has been rewarding and productive, and we look forward to the remaining months of our stay at 945 Madison Avenue as we continue to gain new insights into our collection seeing it reframed in this unprecedented way” , Frick manager Ian Wardropper said in a statement. “We were especially pleased to welcome new audiences to Frick Madison, as well as inspire long-time supporters with thought-provoking installations, new publications and innovative programming.”
Bellini’s Saint Francis in the desert paired with one of the distinctive trapezoidal windows designed by Marcel Breuer for the building Photo: Joe
coscia
Frick’s tenure at the Breuer Building made a powerful contrast between the institution’s world-class collection of Old Masters and the austere modernism of the architecture. It also caused an embrace of contemporary art by Frick’s curators, who have increasingly brought the institution’s age-old paintings and sculptures into dialogue with contemporary art. Shows at Frick Madison included an exhibit that featured Claude Monet and Olafur Eliasson, and another, Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masterswhich juxtaposed paintings by Old Masters with recent works by New York artists Salman Toor, Jenna Gribbon, Toyin Ojih Odutola and Doron Langberg.
The final rounds of programming at Frick Madison will include a site-specific pastel mural by Nicholas Party and a highly anticipated exhibition of portraits by Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017). This to showwhich is hosted by Frick’s director Aimee Ng and Gagosian Antwaun Sargent, will run from September 21, 2023 to January 7, 2024.
Rendering of the Frick Collection expansion from 70th Street, with the Russell Page-designed viewing garden to the right Courtesy of Selldorf Architects
Also on the calendar is an exhibition featuring one of the gems of Frick’s collection, Saint Francis in the Desert by Giovanni Bellini (1475-80), alongside Giorgione’s early 16th century painting, three philosophers. “The installation will once again bring together the beloved paintings for the first time in more than four hundred years,” Frick Deputy Director and Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon said in a statement. “I can’t think of a better coda for what has been a remarkable temporary home for our collection and staff during the critical renovation of our buildings.”
Frick’s renovation of the sumptuous home of his eponymous industrialist went through several iterations before obtaining approval. An earlier plan was heavily criticized for replacing the property’s 70th Street garden with a six-story extension.
