Frick Collection To Open New, Temporary Home, In 1966 Breuer Whitney Museum Building, On…

The Frick Collection will launch Frick Madison, its temporary new home on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, on March 18. Visitors will be able to experience the beloved holdings of the Frick Collection, reframed in a completely new context.

Frick Madison is located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, the former site of the Met Breuer and, previously, the Whitney Museum of American Art, which commissioned the Brutalist building in 1966 by architect Marcel Breuer.

Serving as the Frick’s temporary home for the next two years while its historic buildings at 1 East 70th Street undergo renovation, Frick Madison will mark the first time that a substantial gathering of collection highlights will be presented outside the walls of the museum’s Gilded Age mansion.

In a departure from the Frick’s customary presentation, works are organized at Frick Madison chronologically and by region, allowing for fresh juxtapositions and new insights about the treasured paintings and sculptures by Bellini, Clodion, Gainsborough, Goya, Holbein, Houdon, Ingres, Piero della Francesca, Rembrandt, Titian, Turner, Velázquez, Vermeer and Whistler, among others. The installation also spotlights the Frick’s impressive holdings of decorative arts and sculpture.

Ian Wardropper, director of the Frick Collection, said “We are thrilled that the public can continue to enjoy these great works of art from our collections during a time when they otherwise would be inaccessible as we renovate and enhance our home at 1 East 70th Street. The minimalism of Marcel Breuer’s midcentury architecture provides a unique backdrop for our Old Masters.”

The Frick has created a sequence of gallery spaces at Frick Madison that reflects the museum’s traditional emphasis on intimate encounters with both art and architecture, and allows direct access to objects without the interference of vitrines or stanchions. Recognizing that Breuer’s stark creation of stone and concrete provides a very different museum experience than that offered by the Frick’s Beaux Arts mansion, the museum’s curatorial team has embraced this modernist setting as a unique opportunity. Rather than attempting to replicate the mansion’s domestic display, the installation respects the forms and materials Breuer used, juxtaposing beloved Frick masterpieces with the building’s distinct architectural features, such as its signature trapezoid windows.

Frick Collection deputy director and chief curator Xavier F. Salomon said, “From the very beginning we sought to marry our holdings with Marcel Breuer’s great modernist building, with the intention of revealing the Frick’s strengths in a new way, while inspiring fresh conversations and observations. Throughout the installation, we’ve maintained the core value of the Frick experience: offering visitors the opportunity to study works of art in a direct and immediate way, surrounded by a beautiful and peaceful environment. Rather than trying to recreate the rooms of the mansion, we celebrate this architectural icon, hoping audiences emerge with new understandings of both its features and spaces, and of our remarkable and very distinct collection.”

On the second floor, Holbein’s iconic portraits of Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell hang together, alone. Three paintings by Rembrandt, his Self-Portrait, that of Nicolaes Ruts, and the enigmatic Polish Rider, are shown side by side. Nearby are the Frick’s three Vermeers, genre scenes of men and women presented within domestic interiors. These panels are seldom shown in such proximity. For the first time ever, the Frick’s substantial group of eight full- and half-length portraits by Van Dyck, spanning all periods and geographic locations of his oeuvre, are displayed together in one room.

On the third floor, visitors will encounter works by Titian, Bronzino and Veronese, including a monumental pair of Veronese canvases that has left the walls of the Frick’s West Gallery only once during the past century.

Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert, considered by many to be the greatest Renaissance painting in America, is the sole occupant of a third-floor room. Here the panel can be experienced in a chapel-like space adjacent to one of Breuer’s trapezoidal windows, which allows the natural light of Manhattan to merge with the divine light depicted in the painting.

Also on the third floor is an unprecedented arrangement of nine Spanish paintings by Velázquez, Murillo, El Greco and Goya, works typically scattered throughout the mansion.

On the fourth floor, visitors will find the work of British and French artists. Paintings from the British school are by far the best represented in the Frick’s holdings, a fact that was not apparent until now; previously, these works were dispersed throughout various rooms of the historic mansion. Hung together at Frick Madison for the first time, seven canvases by Gainsborough (the largest gathering by the artist in any New York museum) are shown alongside portraits by Hogarth, Lawrence, Reynolds and Romney.

Another fourth-floor gallery features four full-length portraits by James McNeil Whistler, the American-born, London-based artist.

The fourth floor also offers a focused look at the institution’s French works. Of particular note are the 14 paintings of Fragonard’s Progress of Love series, now displayed together for the first time in the institution’s history. The final gallery displays some of the most modern works in the collection, Manet’s Bullfight and Impressionist canvases by Degas, Monet and Renoir.

In the Breuer building, the Frick’s decorative art is displayed on its own, in a striking, highly dramatic fashion, grouped by category and reframed in an entirely new context. 

On the third floor are groupings of clocks and Limoges enamels; 17^th century Indian carpets, not shown on the floor as furnishings, but hung on the wall like paintings nearby; and a gallery of floor-to-ceiling porcelain organized by color, rather than by function, origin or date of manufacture.

On display on the fourth floor are a fall-front desk and commode made for Marie Antoinette by royal cabinetmaker Riesener; a marble and gilt-bronze table by Gouthière; and early Sèvres porcelain.