Reuniting with the Frick

I returned to New York this Spring to go to my 40^th high school reunion. The trip coincided nicely with the reopening of The Frick Collection after a $220 million, 5-year renovation. After I got over the fact that a $220 million renovation to our house could pay for tearing it down, rebuilding, and refurnishing it over 220 million times, I got down to enjoying the visit.

Growing up, visits to the Frick were an escape, a retreat. In my memory, the price of admission was low -- they only started charging admission in 1976 -- and the place was beautiful. It was also nearly always empty, which was no surprise, given that in 1983, New York only attracted 17 million tourists, compared to the 66 million that now visit each year. My discovery of the museum coincided with my introduction to art history. As I learned about art, there was always something at the Frick — the Cinquecento, Rembrandt, Whistler, or Vermeer — that I could apply my knowledge to.

Leaving New York, I learned to appreciate Frick’s collection even more. I attended college down the road from the Barnes Foundation’s original location, and I did my residency essentially across the street from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.¹ (Note) These are amazing collections, but Henry clearly only collected the best, while Isabella and Albert seemed to approach collecting by telling their assistants to, “Fill the trunks, I’m sure some of it will be good.”

It is great to reconnect.

I mentioned that I was in New York for a high school reunion. I will definitely not be reflecting on the reunion, but I will use the experience as an analogy. Walking through The Frick felt like reconnecting with an old friend you had lost touch with and finding that she is still someone whose company you enjoy. Your conversations pick up are like you talked last week rather than last decade. Seeing her is a particular pleasure because, either the result of newfound happiness or Ozempic, she looks fantastic.

I imagine the house looks as good as it did when the Fricks moved in, although now with better lighting. The new opening of the 2^nd floor, allowing visitors to explore the living quarters, is a special treat. The extra space allows for art and collectables that were in storage to be displayed, or for previously displayed works to be shown in a more appropriate setting.

It turns out that the early Italian Renaissance paintings were the love of Helen Clay Frick and they now hang in her bedroom. Also on the second floor are collections, notably for me, a pocket watch collection!

You’re still the best.

I have written too many times in too many places about how I love that museums change as you visit them over the years. A special pleasure of returning to the Frick is seeing works that I have always loved and still do. This is seeing those friends in whose company I always feel like I am at my best.

The Frick has three paintings by Vermeer. Pause for a second here; there are only 34 definitively identified Vermeers in existence, and three hang in this little house on 5^th Avenue. Girl Interrupted at Her Music is my favorite.

As I stood in front of it and marveled at the light, the brushwork, and the mysterious narrative, I thought of what a treat it was to observe it, alone, while hordes mobbed poor Mona Lisa. I also got downright angry about the Gardner theft. What an antisocial act to rob the entire world of one of these paintings.

Piero della Francesca is among my favorite 15th-century Italian artists. I can’t come up with better adjectives than everybody always uses: solid, sculptural, weighty. The three paintings of individual figures always give me pause.

Compared to Vermeer and Piero, I don’t consider James McNeill Whistler a favorite. However, the four portraits that hang in the oval gallery in the Frick are spectacular. These four just seem like perfect Belle Epoque/Gilded Age party goers who belong here.

I didn’t appreciate you enough.

At my 30^th and 40^th high school reunions, there were people I realized I had never appreciated enough. Seeing them now makes me wish I had spent more time with them over the years. With people, my change in attitude is undoubtedly a result of how we have both changed. With paintings, I can only attribute my newfound appreciation to my own growth.

A masterpiece of the Frick Collection is Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert. Holland Cotter, the co-chief art critic for The Times, identifies this as his favorite painting in the collection. I always thought it was just fine, but since I was last in the museum, I saw a show that included Bellini’s Madonna and Child.

I am now certain that this is my favorite work in the entire genre. The look on Mary’s face. The myriad ways you can read that expression. It could be a Venetian teen-mom, looking at her child like I imagine Janey from Springsteen’s Spare Parts would have looked at her child — the force that disrupted her youth. Or maybe it is the face of a mother who senses what lies ahead for her child.

Armed with a new appreciation of Bellini, I devoured the emotion and detail of the St. Francis.

Sarah, Lady Innes is not someone I would have been friends with in high school. I am not sure what has changed. In Thomas Gainsborough’s hand, she now jumps from the drab background (the lockers in the 6^th-floor hallway?). She strikes me as someone who is probably kind, intelligent, aware that she is not a spectacular beauty, but willing to play along with the portrait dress-up game. I imagine she thinks that holding the flower is ridiculous.

I never liked you. I still don’t.

There are, of course, people you didn’t think much of in high school who, despite the years, you’d still rather just say hi to and move on. When JW and I visited the Frick as teenagers, we made fun of the two painters most represented in the collection, François Boucher (16 works) and Jean-Honoré Fragonard (14 works). Holland Carter describes the Fragonard room as a “visual pandemonium of vegetation and clouds, like being inside a springtime version of a snow-globe.” This is true, and, for me, not a good thing.

An unexpected pleasure

At the reunions I have attended (5, 30, 40), there always seems to be at least one nice surprise, something that makes me think, “I’m glad I overcame my laziness and anxiety to come to this.” Perhaps it’s a teacher you didn’t expect to see, some good merch being sold, or a reminder of a story you’d long since forgotten. At The Frick, the unexpected treat was the ceramic flowers.

Vladimir Kanevsky, was born in Kharkiv. He immigrated as a political refugee in 1989. In a Times article, he noted, “It was not a great time to be Jewish in Russia.” He is a genius whose work in porcelain is magical. The Frick commissioned porcelain flowers for the reopening of the museum. From the Times’ article:

For Mr. Kanevsky, the Frick commission was both a homage “to my beloved museum,” as he said by phone from his home in Fort Lee, N.J., and a nod to the fresh flowers used by Helen Clay Frick, a daughter of the museum’s founder, to lighten the somber mood of the building when it opened to the public in 1935.

There is nothing I can say to do this installation justice. This artnet article and the included images are worth your time. Suffice it to say that when I walked into a room with lilac branches, I was confused. It was already too late for lilacs, and there was none of the expected perfume. Then I remembered, oh yeah, these are made from clay. And they are not just pretty additions. They were made for the museum. I already wrote about my love for the Whistler portraits. I was kind of giddy when I noticed Kanevsky’s cherry blossoms echoing those in one of Whistler’s paintings.

I am sure I will return the Frick, though not as often as I did during high school — a Southwest flight from Midway is more of a hassle than the 6 train from school. I do expect I’ll visit the museum more regularly than I attend reunions.

1. One of my favorite memories of residency was when the attending for a GI consult block brought the team to the Gardner Museum for lunch. As we ate in the pretty dining room, he reviewed a handout on intestinal gas.