![]() ![]() What’s more, Frick in his will stipulated that “the entire public should forever have access” to the art, an astonishingly liberal concept for the day. What kind of man would leave us this extraordinary legacy? His $117 million bequest to the public (roughly $2.3 billion today) was the largest in American history, and a story, according to PBS‘s Treasures of New York, of remarkable wealth and unprecedented generosity. To understand the vision we must consider the man whose life, thoughts, and experiences led him to this collection. Salomon, Chief Curator of The Frick Collection, noting that a Frick picture is calm and elegant, a thing of extreme beauty. The Frick is the vision of this one man, says Xavier F. Schreiner summarizes, the span of Frick’s adult years “corresponded almost exactly with that of the fantastic period of explosive growth in material wealth that made the United States the richest, most powerful nation on earth.” Of the immense fortunes of Morgan, Mellon, Rockefeller, and Carnegie, Frick’s was second only to Rockefeller’s, calculates Forbes. The late 19th century’s Gilded Age had produced unprecedented wealth for a few legendary corporate titans who worked together and knew one another well. Yet The Frick’s serenity today belies a history of labor violence, corporate contention, bitter family disputes, and even a Rasputin-like attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick himself. When it opened in 1915 Architecture Magazine called it the most costly and sumptuous house in America. There’s no other remotely comparable museum in New York, or perhaps anywhere else on the planet. It pulls you in a magical way out of the din of the daily life of New York into its formal intimacy and serenity. Whatever Frick’s hopes for simplicity, the house is one of palatial grandeur, says Metropolitan Museum Director Emeritus Philippe de Montebello. ![]() Frick’s instruction to Hastings had been to build him “a small house with plenty of light and air,” one that would be “simple, in good taste, and not ostentatious.” Architectural critic Dino Marcantonio calls the house a work of art in its own right, worthy of its own visit. His architect, Thomas Hastings of Carrère and Hastings, embellished the rooms with carvings of ancient symbolism, including acanthus leaves indicating long life (which Frick did not obtain) and laurel representing victory (which was often his). And what a museum it is! It also recently had a starring role in the HBO Max television show The Undoing.įrick furnished his 61-room house with Rococo and Renaissance furniture, and accumulated superb decorative arts, including Limoges enamels, Meissen porcelain, and Italian bronzes. The Frick Collection bestows the extraordinary benefit of letting patrons sit and contemplate Henry Clay Frick’s legendary collection of old masters in his serene mansion-all the big names are here-at least until the museum closes for an extensive renovation in 2020. “The Met is admired, but the Frick is beloved,” says architecture critic Paul Goldberger, comparing New York City’s largest and wealthiest museum with its reserved Fifth Avenue neighbor a few blocks to the south. ![]()
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