Through Gilded Doors: A Homecoming at the Frick

In the hush of the second-floor gallery at the Frick Collection, sunlight slices through silky air. Fresh, verdant paint coats the walls, humming against gilded frames, while checkered marble gleams with a hushed glow.

After four years behind closed doors, the Frick Collection has returned—not merely restored, but subtly reimagined—to its original home: a Gilded Age mansion on 1 E 70th Street. Its old-world splendor feels newly approachable, its singular charm still intact to be fruitfully enjoyed by its audience. 

The Frick’s reopening signals the conclusion of a vital renovation project—the biggest in its history. The restoration adds overdue upgrades: elevators, climate controls, and most importantly, galleries carved from former administrative spaces, repurposing them while maintaining the building’s historic intimacy. 

Originally built in 1914 for the steel magnate and renowned art collector Henry Frick, the museum rests on a stretch of the Upper East Side once known as “Millionaires’ Mile,” a corridor of opulent mansions that signaled the wealth and ambition of New York’s elite. Frick commissioned the renowned Beaux-Arts architecture firm Carrère and Hastings, known for designing the New York Public Library, to create a house that could double as a museum to house his extensive art collection. From the beginning, it was built to last—and it has. Even with modern interventions, the experience remains deeply atmospheric. One walks through paneled drawing rooms and hushed corridors, passing French furniture, Flemish tapestries, and Italian bronzes as naturally as one might stroll through a private residence. As many art critics contend, it’s not a white-cube museum, but rather the home of many masterpieces that command attention, packed with centuries of history and artistic genius. 

Passive art pieces that add to the delicacy of the museum lead to the West Gallery. El Greco’s St. Jerome meets your eyes with an eerie force, his ruby robe glistening and his beard coiled in a smoky haze. Painted with striking clarity, St. Jerome commands your line of sight with an austere gaze, furrowed brow, and white beard that radiates spiritual intellect and curiosity. Positioned above a grand mantle in a richly paneled room, the painting is monumental and profoundly contemplative, mirroring just the right amount of light off St. Jerome’s vivid crimson cloak against the dark backdrop. 

Elsewhere, the collection feels newly energized in its original context. Fragonard’s Progress of Love series, painted for Madame du Barry, wraps the viewer in a pastel world of playful excess, experimenting with hyperrealism in a dreamy haze. Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid—which the Rijksmuseum featured in 2023—is hushed yet explosive, orchestrating highlights to carve depth from darkness and guide the viewer’s gaze through the many contrasts. All the while, Rembrandt’s self-portraits seem somehow more mortal, his face shifting with each glance. Even with so much content, the museum resists the urge to overcrowd or over-explain: there are no audio guides or flashy wall texts. Benches, quiet, and the slow pleasure of observation let the audience take the bait into hours of exploration, unspooling rooms of art at the viewer’s own pace. 

The most prominent change is the new second-floor gallery, which housed offices for the Frick Museum’s employees for decades. Now open to the public for the first time ever, these rooms, while smaller, offer fresher angles, both literally and figuratively, to the art and architecture of the building: windows frame snippets of Central Park; small rooms employ various themes, among them Baroque and Renaissance, to engage viewers; and a rhythm of corridors gently guide from one gallery to the next.

Even with various updates, the museum’s soul remains intact. The Garden Court is sunlit, symmetrical, tranquil, and seemingly untouched, as is the grand Oval Room, exuding a discreet opulence that permeates the entire structure, where works by Goya, Gainsborough, and Holbein feel perfectly at home. Visitors still cross the signature parquet floors, pass marble fireplaces, and encounter brilliant art not as spectacle but as homecoming-nestled, not domesticated. The renovation encapsulates Frick’s original vision: a museum that feels like your living room, if your living room were a mansion. The museum’s legacy as a near-private residence has not only survived decades of change but also emerged newly renewed.

The Frick’s return is not a total reinvention. It’s quieter, and perhaps more radical in its restraint than meets the eye—a homecoming. In a city that chases the next big thing, where art is cycled and consumed like the latest magazines, the Frick slows time and allows beauty to linger. Under the furrowed brow of a solitary saint in crimson, the past feels thrillingly alive.