Uncommon Content

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

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.

Vermeer in Philadelphia

Jane Austen at 250

Jane Austen at the Morgan

Sunday, June 8, 2025

Jane Austen at 250

Jane Austen magnets
by Totally_Jane_Austen

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, which means that her 250th birthday is still a full half a year away. But why wait to celebrate?

That's the attitude of a number of places that have are observing her birthday already in various ways. I got to see two of them in one day on a trip into Manhattan today. One was the Morgan Library & Museum exhibit, "A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250," which was just set on June 6 and will run until September 14, 2025.

Joan Hassal's illustrations of Jane Austen's novels published between 1957 and 1963: "Miss Crawford's Harp," "The saunter around Woodstone," "Ann[sic] Elliot and Captain Wentworth," "Captain Benedick runs for help," "Willoughby carries in Marianne," "Elinor meets Miss Steele in Kensington Gardens"

These illustrations are among the many items that enriched the Jane Austen collection at the Morgan thanks to the donation of an extensive collection amassed by Alberta and Henry Gershon Burke (who changed his last name from the more Jewish-sounding Berkowitz). The exhibit also shows something the Burkes purchased but were pressured not to take out of England -- a lock of Jane Austen's hair that Alberta Burke gifted to the he Jane Austen Society in Chawton.

Alberta willed her her extensive collection to Goucher College and the Morgan. The former was given the books and correspondence, while the latter received Austen letters and manuscripts upon her death in 1975. In 1979, Henry Burke, along with Joan Austen-Leigh and J. David Grey founded The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA).

Candles and other Jane Austen at 250 merch vailable at Totally_Jane_Austen

Pride and Prejudice Off-Broadway

Extending the celebration of Jane Austen, we took in the adaptation of her most popular novel in a much-cut version played by one actor and two actresses taking on multiple roles each to heighten the comedy and showcase teh adeptness of the depictions of character. In truth, the tickets were purchased before we planned the stop at the Morgan for the morning before the matinee. If you want to catch this version in NYC, you'll have to get your tickets within the month. The play's run is limited to just 5 weeks and so ends at the end of June.

This is a fun version of the novel with clever choreography and use of accessories to enable the three people on stage to represent all the Bennets, the Gardiners, Darcy, Wickham, Charlotte Lucas, Mr. Collins, Bingley, his sister, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and Darcy's housekeeper, though it had to cut out several characters (not just the Hursts the way most productions do) and some key dialog.

One cut particularly disappointed me: the elimination of the discussion of accomplished women. As you can see from this blog post, it's one that I consider key to the Elizabeth's character and an important life-lesson to push back when you are held to an impossible standard.

If you want to mark the novelist's 250th birthday, there's no better way to do it than with a the Jane Austen products for sale here. I can assure you that you'll find better pricing at the Zazzle store than you would in the Morgan gift shop. I checked myself.