On April 17, the Frick Collection will reopen in its historic Fifth Avenue home—now with a $220 million facelift. As audiences return to the Gilded Age mansion,
Artforum looks back to the magazine’s Summer 2021 issue, where critic and curator Jeffrey Weiss provides
his impressions of Frick Madison, the collection’s temporary home in the Marcel Breuer–designed structure at 945 Madison Avenue.
The two sites, Weiss explains, could not be more different: One is an austere masterpiece of Brutalist architecture, the other an ornate residence. This changed context shapes the viewer’s experience in profound and unexpected ways, raising deep questions about the historically contingent form of museums and their shifting function over time.
“For those long used to visiting the Frick Collection, the change is transformational. Three paintings by Vermeer, for example, are displayed on three adjacent walls, an arrangement that is discreetly formal but otherwise without ceremony. The effect is heart-stopping. This sensation derives not from the utmost rarity of the works . . . but from a naked intensity of pictorial encounter.”
—The editors
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