Freshened-Up Frick to Reopen in April 2025

New York’s Frick Collection is set toreopenin its original home, a Gilded Age mansion at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East Seventieth Street in Manhattan, in April 2025. The building, which was formerly the residence of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, has been closed for a $220 million renovation since 2020, its trove of old masterstemporarily houseda half mile away, at the Marcel Breuer–designed building that for decades served as the home of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Designed by Selldorf Architects, with Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners acting as executive architect, the renovation included the restoration of the mansion’s extant first-floor galleries and added new galleries on both the ground and second floors, the latter of which was previously off-limits to the public. “People are going to love being able to go upstairs and see the family rooms,”outgoingFrick director Ian Wardropper told theNew York Times.Other changes include the removal of the museum’s 149-seat oval music room, which has been replaced with the 220-seat Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium; the refurbishment of the Frick Art Research Library’s reading room; and the addition to the building of multiple entry points.

Wardropper, whose role will be filled by Axel Rüger following his departure this spring, told the Times that in addition to mounting never-before-seen displays of its old masters within the Brutalist surrounds of the Frick Madison, the Frick Collection had loaned out a number of works to other institutions during the closure. Those borrowing works for the first time included the Prado in Spain, London’s National Gallery, and Paris’s Musée d’Orsay. “We’re going to get great loans in return,” said Wardropper.

The Frick will celebrate its reopening with a weeklong festival of classical and contemporary music, to take place in late April; a commission by Vladimir Kanevsky of porcelain flowers in tribute to the floral arrangements created for the Frick’s 1935 inauguration; and, in late June, an exhibition of the work of iconic Dutch master Johannes Vermeer in the new first-floor galleries, featuring works from its own collection as well as those borrowed from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.