The Frick Collection Has a Temporary New Home
March 16, 2021 | In the PressFrom Spectrum News (https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2021/03/16/the-frick-collection-has-a-temporary-new-home)
Rembrandt, Monet, Renoir - works by some of the Old Master and Impressionist artists that are part of The Frick Collection. But this isn't the Gilded Age Mansion on 70th Street and Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side where they have hung for decades, but instead a temporary new home for these masterpieces at Frick Madison.
"There are many discoveries that you can make here and I've had many people on staff and friends and colleagues who just looked at objects and said, ‘I've never seen that before,’ and of course the objects were always on view at The Frick,” said Xavier Salomon, Deputy Director and Peter J. Sharp Chief Curator of the The Frick Collection.
Highlights from that collection are on view for the next two years in the building that once housed the Whitney Museum and the Met Breuer at 75th Street and Madison Avenue, while the Frick's historic home undergoes a massive renovation.
Salomon says it was a daunting task to move highlights of the collection about six blocks and re-imagine the museum, which first opened to the public in 1935.
"It was a wonderful opportunity to have an empty building with three floors, where we could build the walls and create rooms and design the rooms around the groups of art that we wanted to display here," he said.
There are paintings, sculpture, rugs, even furniture once owned by Marie Antoinette, all in a different setting, but with the same intimacy offered at the Frick family mansion.
"You will have a great opportunity to see things close up,” he added “There are no barriers, very little vitrines, so you see things in a way that you would see them at the house as well but in a totally different configuration,” said Salomon.
Frick Madison will be open to the public Thursday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 25% capacity with COVID-19 protocols in place. Tickets are available online at Frick.org.
