Frick Collection Reveals Plans For Temporary New UES Home

Nick Garber
Updated ·2 min read

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The Frick Collection unveiled details this week about its plans to open a new, temporary home elsewhere on the Upper East Side while its main digs are under renovation.

Back in 2018, the Frick first announced that it would move into the former Met Breuer building at 945 Madison Ave., formerly home to the Whitney Museum, while its historic home on 70th Street is remodeled. (Met Breuer closed permanently this summer after shutting its doors during the coronavirus pandemic.)

This week, the Frick revealed what, precisely, will be on display for two years at the new "Frick Madison" once it opens in early 2021.

Curators will exhibit the museum's existing collection in a new format, the institution said Wednesday: instead of scattering works throughout the museum, they will be grouped chronologically and by region.

That includes paintings and sculptures by such artists as Goya, Rembrandt, Titian, Velázquez, Vermeer and Whistler, the museum said.

Works on display will include Johannes Vemeer's "Mistress and Maid" (1667). (The Frick Collection)
Works on display will include Johannes Vemeer's "Mistress and Maid" (1667). (The Frick Collection)

The museum will also display rarely-seen items from deep in its collection, including sixteenth-century Mughal carpets and canvases by the eighteenth-century Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, which have never been shown together in their entirety.

Frick Madison will spread across three floors of the Breuer building, consisting of galleries dedicated to French, Spanish, Italian, Northern European and British art.

"We are thrilled that the public will be able to continue to enjoy these great works of art during the renovation and enhancement of our permanent home at 1 East 70th Street, a time when they otherwise would be inaccessible," the Frick's director, Ian Wardropper, said in a statement.

The Frick's ongoing "renovation and enhancement" project aims to modernize its original space, housed inside the 1914 home of Henry Clay Frick. The new facility will preserve the museum's intimate environment but also create new exhibition areas, upgrade amenities and improve accessibility, the museum said.

This article originally appeared on the Upper East Side Patch