NEW YORK—After five years and $220 million, the newly renovated and much beloved Frick Collection art museum reopened its doors to the public on April 17.
The classical art museum has been closed since the start of COVID-19 in 2020. Its first major renovation in 90 years added a second floor, an underground auditorium, and new space for research.
“I think it’s magnificent,” Susie Korb told The Epoch Times. “I think it’s the same but different. All the paintings look so beautiful, of course, because they’re masterpieces.”
Korb visited The Frick Collection every few years before the closure. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the hometown of the collection’s namesake, Henry Clay Frick.
Korb said her favorite part of the museum is “the singular vision of the collector, the fact that it was one person and the curators that then continued that. That amassed a collection with a really clear point of view, and it’s housed in an environment that was created for it.”
The Frick Collection is the personal art collection of Frick, who was a Gilded Age coke (a type of coal-based fuel) and steel giant. He was a business partner of steel billionaire Andrew Carnegie. Frick would later partner with the prominent banker J.P. Morgan to invest in the American railroad system. The collection is housed in Frick’s mansion near Central Park in Manhattan. The mansion is rich with Beaux-Arts architecture, marble floors, and beautiful gardens.
The Frick first opened to the public in 1934. It contains 1,800 pieces of fine and decorative art. Over half of the pieces of art were not part of Frick’s original collection and were added after his death in 1919.
One of Korb’s favorite parts about The Frick Collection is the lack of glass protection over everything. “It’s such a relief not to have [things under glass], not that the old Frick had things under glass. But so many museums, when you go and look at what you want to see, it’s under glass. And somehow, the ability through this installation with the furniture of the period, the great masterpieces of furniture, and the floral arrangements, it just gives you such an immense understanding of the collection and of an era.”
Veronica Smith said she loves the Gilded Age building design and history. “I love the architecture. I’m an architect, so I love the space,” she said. Smith was visiting from Mexico City with her daughter.
“I love the spaces, how you feel in a certain space, and you know, you can translate that in different styles or different portions, but the way that a space makes you feel, I think that’s to understand the way that people used to live, because in a different age, I was telling my daughter, there was no phones, internet, TV, whatever. So, you know, people lived in a different way.”
The carefully constructed halls, stone pillars, and galleries of The Frick Collection are decorated with 14th to 19th-century European paintings, sculptures, and Chinese porcelain. Much of the mansion is decorated and laid out as it was back in Henry Frick’s time. Old bookshelves, chairs, and curtains set the observer in the time of Frick’s extraordinary wealth.
Ivan Samoilenko had been waiting for months to be able to visit the collection for the first time. “I love museums, and I’ve been waiting for this opening for almost a year, and now I’m here.”
Samoilenko is from Moscow, Russia, and is studying at George Washington University. He said that The Frick Collection was like the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, which is a very large and old museum of European art.
He said loved the porcelain flower displays throughout the galleries and said it “makes the room fresh.”
Another new admirer of The Frick Collection is Lizzy Costigan. She decided to visit the museum almost by accident. She wanted to visit somewhere else for her 25th birthday, but it was sold out. In her despair, she came across The Frick Collection and thought she would try it. The staff let her enter even though tickets were sold out.
“I told [the staff] it was my birthday, and she let me come in, even though they were sold out. So they were so nice,” she said.
She mentioned that she had been to art collections in Europe but not in her home of New York. She enjoyed The Frick, saying, “It’s really beautiful. I was loving all the trees outside. I like how the nature is combining with the art. I love that.”
She particularly loved The Four Seasons, a four-painting series by French artist Francois Boucher. “I like the range with the Seasons. And I really liked the characters, like the way that they painted their eyes specifically, it was really good.”
The Frick Collection is open Wednesday to Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Adult tickets are $30, and 18 and under can visit for free.
