Like everything in New York, the fabulous Frick Collection at Fifth Ave. and 70th St., closed down due to COVID in mid-March 2020. But unlike everything else, the Frick art museum is only now reopening in what was the house of Henry Clay Frick, who was the robber baron chairman of Carnegie Steel.
During the five years, while some of the art was displayed a few blocks away in the Brutalist former home of the Whitney at Madison and 75th, the Frick has been rebuilt and restored and rehabbed, successfully realizing a vision of Ian Wardropper, who just stepped down as the Frick’s director. Go visit, but keep the kids at home, as there are too many precious objects for little hands to break and everyone must be age 10 or older.
We had long supported the plan to upgrade the Frick, but litigious neighbors went to court. Luckily, the Frick won. While the old oval music room is gone, the sacrifice was worth it.
The second floor, off limits since the museum opened in 1935 and used as staff offices, is now fully public. The grand staircase is no longer roped off, but welcoming people to ascend and Mrs. Frick’s boudoir, with its Boucher murals of frolicking angels, is back upstairs, having been returned to its original location.
A huge step forward actually isn’t about steps, but finally installing a dignified ramp at the main entrance, which we happily walked up. Until now, people with disabilities using a wheelchair could only enter via a below-grade service ramp, the same used for the garbage. And anyone in a large motorized wheelchair also had to change to a smaller wheelchair to fit into the ancient elevators. Now, all of the Frick is accessible to all.
And once where there was a single 1930-era public restroom at the bottom of a set of steep stairs, we counted 17 individual modern toilets in the new subterranean lobby and auditorium. There will be even more toilets when the coming café opens up. And there is an internal passageway to the Frick Art Reference Library, now called the Frick Art Research Library. It’s worth seeing the restored public reading room on the third floor.
But the reason to visit is to see Mr. Frick’s paintings.
In Frick’s living room are still Thomas Moore and Thomas Cromwell eying each other (both by Holbein the Younger) with El Greco’s St. Jerome between them. Watch the classic film “A Man for All Seasons” to understand their feud.
And there is Frick’s once-private viewing space, the West Gallery, with its Rembrandts and Goyas and the collection’s sole Velasquez: Philip IV of Spain. Amid all this splendor, it was Frick’s favorite and now it can be the favorite of everyone.
