If you felt a quiver in the air in Manhattan today—one that seemed to radiate from the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and East 70th Street—it was likely because the Frick Collection, which closed the doors of its Beaux Arts mansion five years ago for a sweeping expansion, briefly reopened this morning for a special preview.
Selldorf Architects, led by Annabelle Selldorf, spearheaded the renovation (with help from the firm Beyer Blinder Belle), growing the Frick’s overall footprint by 10% (it now sprawls over 196,000 square feet) and, in so doing, significantly ramping up its exhibition space. Happily, the work is deft and elegant—more than worthy of a museum so beloved by so many.
Speaking to Vogue contributing editor Dodie Kazanjian last year, Ian Wardropper, the Frick’s former director, said that he wanted Selldorf “to create a beautiful space that would harmonize with what was there before. We genuinely hope that you need to pause and ask yourself what’s new and what’s old.”
Well, allow us to spoil the experience just a little. Read on for what you can expect from the Frick’s grand reopening this spring.
When will the Frick reopen to the public?
After five years shrouded behind tarps and scaffolding, the Frick Collection officially reopens to the public on Thursday, April 17. (In the interim, the Frick Madison—a wonderful experiment in radically recontextualizing the museum’s paintings, sculptures, and decorative objects by moving them into the Marcel Breuer building on 75th and Madison—was open from March 2021 to March 2024.) Frick members will be able to access the building a bit earlier, on dedicated preview days from April 9 and 13.
Is the Frick Art Research Library finally reopening, too?
Yes! It reopens the same day as the main building, on April 17. There is also, excitingly, a new artery connecting the James S. and Barbara N. Reibe Reception Hall (where coat check and the member desk were before the museum closed) to the library beyond.
What—gulp—are some of the biggest changes to the building?
While the museum’s best-loved galleries and spaces—the Garden Court, the West Gallery, the Oval Room, the East Gallery, the Living Hall, the Fragonard Room, the Portico Gallery, the Dining Room, the gardens, etc.—remain largely as they were (though the velvet and damask wall coverings have been refreshed and the skylights replaced), other parts of the building have been reimagined in a major way, if not created from scratch.
Among the most prominent interventions: The small Music Room that used to sit just east of the Garden Court has been transformed into a special-exhibitions space, formally known as the Ronald S. Lauder Exhibition Galleries. (Gone is the slightly cramped but charming space for temporary exhibitions in the basement.) Going forward, the Frick’s concerts, talks, and other events will take place in the brand-new, 218-seat Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium underground. (As Wardropper put it to Kazanjian, “Sometimes progress requires taking down what was there before, and the Music Room has always been too small for its purpose, and the acoustics were always subpar.”) The Frick’s education department also has a sunlit new room for its programming abutting the 70th Street Garden.
Also: The second floor. This is a big one, people! Once cordoned off by an actual velvet rope, the Frick family’s former private quarters—later used as offices for Frick staff—are now open to visitors as intimate, nested galleries for smaller works (the Boucher Room is up here now, in Mrs. Adelaide Childs Frick’s former boudoir) as well as a few bigger ones (like Ingres’s great Louise, Princesse de Broglie, Later the Comtesse d’Haussonville in the Walnut Room—what was once Henry Clay Frick’s bedroom). With their plush carpeting and views of the Fifth Avenue Garden, these rooms are wonderfully tranquil and cozy. They’ve also increased the museum’s gallery space by some 30%.
But that’s not all! The second floor also features, above the reception hall (via the incredible Breccia Aurora marble staircase that you’ve likely seen by now), a new gift shop and—get this—the Frick’s first permanent public café.
Will there be any temporary exhibitions?
While the Frick won’t inaugurate its Ronald S. Lauder Exhibition Galleries until June, there is plenty to discover and explore around the building until then. Below, an overview of its current and forthcoming exhibitions:
In homage to the arrangements of flowers that filled the Frick when it first opened to the public in 1935, Ukrainian artist Vladimir Kanevsky has created an impressive series of porcelain plants and flowers. These works appear throughout the galleries on both the main and second floors.
In the new Cabinet Gallery—what was once the Boucher Room—on the first floor, curator Aimee Ng has organized a suite of works on paper by Degas, Goya, Ingres, Rubens, and Whistler, dating from the 15th through the 19th centuries.
The first big temporary show at the museum will come this summer, when the Frick exhibits three works by Johannes Vermeer: its own Mistress and Maid from around 1666–67—in fact, the final artwork that Henry Clay Frick acquired before his death—plus The Love Letter (a loan from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum) and Woman Writing a Letter, With Her Maid (a loan from the National Gallery of Ireland).
And there is more to come in the fall and next year: first, in September, an exhibition of the work of British painter Flora Yukhnovich; then, in October, a presentation of gold and silver objets and textiles from the Terra Sancta Museum in Jerusalem; in February 2026, a show about Thomas Gainsborough’s portraiture and 18th-century fashion; and in October 2026, “Siena: The Art of Bronze,” which centers the city’s production of bronze masterworks during the Italian Renaissance. Frick fans, we are so back.