The Frick Collection after its 5 year, $220 million renovation

Mistress and Maid by Johannes Vermeer c. 1667 in the Frick Collection. 

Has it really been five years since I was last at the Frick prior to my visit on June 22? I guess it must have been. We didn't return as soon as it reopened this spring but waited until the Vermeer "Love Letters" exhibit opened. I'll start with that as I catalogue the renovated museum's hits and misses.

Top Highlight: Vermeer

The special Vermeer exhibit is ranks at the top of my list for the hits of the Frick's reopening. It  brought in two Vermeer paintings to complement the Mistress and Maid shown above. One is Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid, ca. 1670–72, from the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.

The other is The Love Letter, ca. 1669–70 from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

I urge you to get over to the Frick before the exhibit closes on August 31 because it's quite an experience seeing these three paintings together in-person. The Love Letter one reminds me of Vermeer's The Guitar Player  c 1672 and a variation of it on display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. My favorite of these three is Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid.*  

Access to the Second Floor

Thanks to the renovation, visitors now have access to the second floor, which showcases some art in what had been bedrooms and also houses the museum's gift shop and cafe. This is generally a hit, though I would have liked the bedrooms to retain their original furnishings or their reproductions to reflect what the rooms were like when a family lived in the mansion. There are only a few dressers with no information about them. Speaking of that ...

Information on the Exhibits

The information on the art on view -- both on the placards on the walls and through the app that replicates information to be found on the Frick's site -- is extremely uneven. You'll get more than you want to know about Jean-Honoré Fragonard's "The Progress of Love," but find out absolutely nothing about some of the clocks and scores of other pieces. It is rather frustrating for those of us who would like more information. It's a serious missed opportunity for the museum not to have improved that aspect of its exhibit while investing so much money and time in the renovation. 

Ticketing and Timing: Hits and Misses

Tickets for adults cost $30. Years ago, the Frick generously offered "pay what you wish" times on Sundays. Unfortunately, it shifted that offer to the far less convenient time of  Wednesday afternoons 1:30-5:30 PM. 

If that doesn't work for you, check your local library for membership passes that will allow entry for 2, saving you $60. If you have a card at a New York City library, inquire about  Culture Pass availability. You won't only save money but time because those membership passes allow you to enter any time of day and  skip the line of people waiting to get their timed tickets.  

Allow me my rant on timed tickets, which were  popularized during the reopening of museums after the pandemic lockdowns. The more enlightened museums like the Met** dropped that major inconvenience aa couple of years ago. It only requires timed entry -- though not additional ticket purchases -- to the special exhibits. That the Frick is still stuck in 2021 even after the 2025 reopening is a major miss, but it pales beside another one. 

Really Rare Restrooms

Who designs a renovation for a building with a legal capacity of 1350 with  just three sets of bathrooms? The architect of the Frick renovation does. 

Yes, only half a dozen people would be able to use the restrooms with just two (one for each gender, though heaven knows why when they are all single-occupancy)  on the second floor and in two basement levels. I cannot comment on what these looked like inside because I never got beyond a locked door or a extended line leading up to it. 

I'm shocked that no architect consulted on this project pointed out a standard ratio based on the projected number of visitors, especially in light of the addition of the cafe. Seriously, who does that, especially on a $220 million budget?

Filling in the Sketch

To end on a positive note about what the Frick does well, I want to comment on the Cabinet Gallery. It's one of the smallest rooms on the first floor that is filled with sketches. The highlight of that for me was seeing a sketch for one of the Frick's celebrated paintings: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' portrait of Louise, Princesse de Broglie, Later the Comtesse d'Haussonville. 

*Notice that the love letters theme assumes literate women. I didn't think that much about that aspect until I saw the The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt special exhibit at The Jewish Museum. (You can catch it through August 10, 2025. Check your library for passes, or plan your visit for the Museums on Us Day to save the $15 per person admission.) A number of the paintings show Esther involved in writing, reflecting the unusually  high  literacy rate of the Dutch at the time. You may also notice that the tables featured in most of these paintings are covered by rugs just like the table  in Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid. 

**Speaking of the Met, it also has a temporary exhibit worth catching this summer: Sargent and Paris. Catch that one before it closes on August 3rd. It definitely worth the trip. The Met never imposes an extra charge for its special exhibits. Residents of NY and the metro area always get to pay what they wish, and for other visitors, it's possible to get in free on the first weekend of the month through the Museums on Us program from Bank of America.  Also the Met is home to five Vermeer paintings, so it will make a complement to the three you can see in the Frick now. One of them, Young Woman with a Lute,  features the same yellow jacket. 

Related: 

Vermeer in Philadelphia

Jane Austen at 250

Jane Austen at the Morgan

Vermeer in Philadelphia

Seeing a Vermeer painting may warrant a trip from New York to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA),  but I'm not certain that is what I saw there  

This was not a special exhibit with a masterpiece on loan like the one at the Frick I described 10 years ago. This was just a painting that had  sustained damage and was not displayed until an expert suggested it is a genuine Vermeer rather than a copy of The Guitar Player, c. 1672  that lives in Kenwood House in England.

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The Guitar Player, c. 1672 Johannes Vermeer 

If you zoom in on the image on the Google Arts & Culture, you would see some cracks in the paint, which is to be expected after over three centuries. But that painting is still in fairly good shape, especially when you contrast it with the version that was thrown into storage and incurred a very visible rip on the lower right hand corner. That's the state of the painting you can currently see in-person in Gallery 364 of the PMA's main building. 

The Guitar Player (Lady with a Guitar) (detail), c.1670-1720, by Possibly Johannes Vermeer or a copyist (Dutch (active Delft), 1632–1675), Cat. 497

As you can see, this is essentially the same picture twice with just a variation in the sitter's hairstyle. That is why it was assumed to be a copy of the Vermeer an not treated with the greatest of care. But that changed just this year.

As the tour guide explained, and the museum site records:

 In March 2023, researcher Arie Wallert reasoned that the Philadelphia painting could be by Vermeer himself, altered at some time in its past by aggressive cleaning attempts that removed much of the artist’s uppermost finishing layers of paint....

Old restorations were removed from the painting 50 years ago, revealing exactly what remains of the original paint. The painting is on view in this unrestored condition, giving all a rare opportunity to see what researchers have been looking at for the past five decades in their search for clues of style, technique, or materials that might yet tell us—Vermeer’s own work, or another artist’s?

Wallert found that the paint samples of the paintings in question were consistent with the paints available to and used by Vermeer, including his favored shades of yellow and the very costly ultramarine blue. He also established that the canvas is from the right time period, though it doesn't quite match the ones  in the other Vermeer paintings.  

It adds up to a Schrödinger's Vermeer situation. It may be worth 9 figures, or it may only hold the value of a good copy that's about 350 years old. It has yet to be determined. For now, the museum currently lists the painting as a Vermeer in the signs on the main floor, though the paper maps do not yet include it among its "must-see" items.

If you do make the trip into Philadelphia to draw your own conclusion on the Vermeer questions, there is also a lot more to see in this museum. Crowds also line up outside to take selfies with a statue of Rocky, the boxer who made the steps of the museum famous in this iconic film scene:

Oddly enough, though, the statue doesn't show him in the basic sweats but in his boxing shorts. Capitalizing further on the Rocky association, Philadelphia plans a Rocky Run on November 11. 

You you may want to steer clear of the museum that day. It's challenging enough to park nearby as it is, though I recommend you look around the numbered streets in the mid 20s perpendicular to Green street. .

The museum charge $30 for admission and  grants a mere $2 discount for seniors over 65. Students with valid ID pay $14, and kids under 18 get in free. To save on the admission cost, you can plan to go one of the "pay what you wish occasions." That's every Friday after 5 PM (the museum stays open until 8:45 on Fridays) and the first Sunday of each month.

The site still is showing timed tickets that you can purchase in advance, but  you really can just show up when you want and buy the ticket on the spot.

Related:

Jane Austen at the Morgan

Fom $7 to priceless: masterpiece marketing

The crowd waiting to get in to the Frick on Sunday, November 17th

Today I visited the Frick Collection to see the special exhibit on view through January 19, 2014,  Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis. (Of course, I also went into the rest of the museum, but as I've there several times before, the real draw for me, as it was for the many people waiting around the whole stretch between 70th and 71st and even round back onto 71st -- in the rain as pictured here.)

The visiting  painting that is the unquestioned star of the special exhibit is  "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Not only does it illustrate all the promotions for the exhibit, but it  given pride of place -- the equivalent of a solo performance -- in the museum. It is the only painting hanging in the oval room. Its special position allows visitors enough room to cluster around it without blocking people's view.



The exhibition details tell a rags to riches story about the painting, both in terms of its restoration and in terms of its valuation. The audio guide, relayed that the star painting was sold for the equivalent of just $7, as relayed here:

The history of the acquisition of the Vermeer has by now become legendary. Des Tombe purchased Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in 1881 at a sale at the Venduhuis der Notarissen in the Nobelstraat in The Hague for 2 guilders with a 30 cent premium.  ...After Des Tombe’s death on 16 December 1902 (his wife had died the year before and their marriage had remained childless) it turned out that he had secretly bequeathed 12 paintings to the Mauritshuis, including Vermeer’s famous Girl with a Pearl Earring."⁴(from Quentin Buvelot, "COLLECTING HISTORY: ON DES TOMBE, DONOR OF VERMEER'S GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING" in the Mauritshuis Bulletin, Vol. 17, no. 1, March 2004)

 Why should a painting that originally sold for just $7 become such an attraction? The answer is simple.   It is now Vermeer's  best known painting,  thanks to Tracey Chevalier's 1999 novel, which was the basis of a very successful 2003 movie. Now that's an interesting point in terms of marketing value. The Frick is well aware of the film's role in the painting's popularity and so is offering a showing of it on Monday evening, November 18th, with an exhibition viewing to begin at 5:30 and the film at 6.  

 Not to say that the painting is not worth of attention, but I'm not certain it would have drawn such a crowd if not for the attention cast on it by a bestselling book and well-received movie. It's certainly not the only painting by Vermeer to feature a woman in pearl earrings. One of the three Vermeers that the Frick owns is a later work of his, "Mistress and Maid" pictured here.  But no one wrote a book to popularize the story that the painting seems to tell and then went on to dramatize the same in a film, despite the suggestiveness of the woman's expression at being handed a letter by her maid.

It's something to consider: commissioning a book that could turn into a popular film to cast the spotlight on a particular work of art.