Otherwise, the centuries-old works by artists such as Rembrandt, Titian or Vermeer hang in a villa in New York’s Central Park – between wood-paneled walls and courtyards with fountains. The Frick Collection’s new home, at least temporarily, is only a few blocks away, but the contrast couldn’t be greater: In the brutalist building by architect Marcel Breuer, the old masters meet concrete and trapezoidal windows.
The opening of “Frick Madison” on New York’s posh Upper East Side for visitors on Thursday (March 18) is one of the biggest art events in the metropolis since the beginning of the pandemic – and will also serve as a kind of starting signal for spring and summer with bigger ones again and more spectacular art events and a foreseeable end to the corona frustration in the New York cultural scene, which has been badly shaken by the crisis.
The museums in New York have been allowed to reopen since the end of last summer – with restrictions and hygiene rules – but the number of visitors is still at a low level, and many exhibitions have been postponed. Other cultural institutions such as the Broadway theaters or the Metropolitan Opera are currently planning not to reopen until the end of the year.
The revival begins with the third life of the Breuer building: until 2014, the building, completed in 1966, was home to the Whitney Museum for American Art, after which it was temporarily a branch of Max Hollein’s Metropolitan Museum. The Met had exhibited modern art in the “Met Breuer” and had actually planned to do so for a few more years, but the upkeep became too expensive.
The Frick Collection, on the other hand, wants to expand and remodel its actual home – a villa built by the steel magnate Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) at the beginning of the 20th century which, including the garden – takes up almost an entire block – by 2023 and was looking for a temporary solution for their collection. So it came to “Frick Madison”.
“It is the rare opportunity to see our collection in a new light,” said Frick Director Ian Wardropper at a video-broadcast advance press conference. Paintings, statues and porcelain are cautiously distributed over the rooms, the walls are kept in a simple gray – there is always an interplay with light falling through the large, trapezoidal windows and the views of the sea of houses in Manhattan behind. “We wanted a very minimalist, sometimes almost Spartan look,” says curator Xavier Salomon. “Our great hope is that people can rediscover the Frick Collection.”
The rest of New York’s art scene is also hoping for a revival and rediscovery – and the reasonably stable infection rate and the rapid progress in vaccination make these hopes seem realistic. Numerous exhibitions that have been postponed or completely new in the pandemic have already been announced.
For example, the Whitney Museum, which is now at home in south Manhattan, plans to open a new permanent installation on its doorstep in Hudson River Park in May. With “Day’s End” the US artist David Hammons wants to install a structure that traces the outlines of a former port building on the spot. Right next to it, “Little Island” is to open in the spring, a park with numerous cultural offers on an artificial island in the Hudson River.
The Metropolitan Museum has already announced numerous exhibitions for spring and summer, for example by several photographers and on the Italian Medici dynasty between the 15th and 18th centuries, as well as a new installation on the roof of the museum by US artist Alex Da Corte. “We are moving forward with a lot of energy,” said the Austrian director Hollein recently at a video press conference: “And I think it’s outstanding that we can offer such a strong program despite a pandemic.”
–
