The Frick Collection, which since March 2021 has been housed in the Marcel Breuer-designed building at 945 Madison Avenue, will return to its elegant Golden Age home on Fifth Avenue at Seventieth Street in March 2024. The Old Masters Treasure ornately framed pieces assembled by Henry Clay Frick moved into the Brutalist structure ahead of a planned $160 million renovation and expansion of the industrialist’s former mansion. Initially predicted to be completed in the spring of 2023, the restoration will be completed in early 2024; the Frick Collection will welcome visitors to its refreshed excavations later that year.
“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” , said Frick. director Ian Wardropper. “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.”
The five-story Breuer Building from 1966 housed the Whitney Museum of American Art for nearly decades before the contemporary art institution decamped at his newly built home, designed by Renzo Piano, in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District in 2015. The Metropolitan Museum of Art operated the Met Breuer in the Madison Avenue building for several years, but permanently closed the food-focused operation contemporary art in July 2020 as Covid raged across the globe. The austere, nearly windowless confines of the Frick Madison, as the temporary home of the Frick Collection was called, allowed innovative presentations works from the collection, sometimes paired with contemporary works and shown in entirely new configurations in others. In addition, Frick’s curators were able to exhibit together for the first time the fourteen works that make up Fragonard’s “Progress of Love” series.
