The Frick Collection may just be the last New York institution to reopen after COVID. The mansion museum shut its East 70th Street doors for a top-to-tail renovation in March 2020—and then, interminable lockdown. The intervening years saw the Frick’s monumental collection of Early Modern and 19th-century artworks—a Gilded Age trove that made Henry Clay Frick’s new money feel old––temporarily stationed at the brutalist fortress of the Breuer building, but visiting them there never felt as personal. The Frick reopening this spring feels like a particularly rare bulb is blooming for the first time since the pandemic.
At the helm of the very careful renovation was Annabelle Selldorf, the art world’s favorite architect. Selldorf and her work have been featured in Vogue several times, but her first real spotlight moment came in 1996, when the Cologne native met writer Charles Gandee, photographer François Halard, and sittings editor Miranda Brooks for a profile that announced her status as the envy of her profession across eight pages in our August issue. She was only 36 years old.
“Selldorf believes architects should tread lightly and make their mark not with dramatic flourishes but with satisfying proportions and well-honed details,” Gandee wrote. “‘I think my aesthetic can be generally described as restrained, and therefore fundamentally modern,’ sums up Selldorf, who regards the fact that she has no particular stylistic ax to grind as a point of pride.” In other words, this star was no starchitect.
The Frick updates are so graceful that unobservant visitors might not even notice them, though they will feel them. In the New York Times review of the renovation, Michael Kimmelman likened her precision to the work of a cardiologist, which felt like an apt comparison. With the Frick and its garden open to the public, we will all feel a little bit healthier. |
