Here's A Look Inside The Frick's New Galleries Ahead Of Grand Opening

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — After a decade of planning, five years of extensive renovations and $330 million, the Frick Collection will finally officially reopen its Upper East Side mansion to the public on April 17.

The major renovation included restoring the Frick’s historic first-floor art galleries, adding a new suite of 10 galleries on the second floor, creating a new 220-seat auditorium, refurbishing the reading room and much more, museum officials said.

The upgrade represents the largest renovation since the museum was opened in 1935, with 27,000 square feet of new construction, and 60,000 square feet of repurposed space.

This breakdown includes new spaces built for public programming, including the new auditorium and an education room.

"Paradoxically, after all of this effort, we hope that many visitors will wonder, 'What changed?'" Ian Wardropper, the Frick's director emerita, said at a press preview of the museum on Tuesday.

"Our goal and priority has always been to preserve and revitalize the experience that makes the Frick so unique."

One of the most exciting changes will be the opening of the second floor, which was previously the Frick's living quarters, and up until now, has been used as office space for museum administrators.

Now, the second floor will showcase carefully restored rooms and new gallery spaces, with rarely exhibited collections of art alongside ceiling murals, marble fireplaces, and elaborate carved woodwork.

To get there, the public can take the new elevators, or walk up the iconic grand staircase, which, until now, had been cordoned off with a velvet rope.

The project was designed by Selldorf Architects to make the galleries more accessible, museum officials said.

"We are now looking forward, of course, to really open the Frick up and establish it yet again in the public consciousness as really a place of wonder, joy, inspiration, imagination and perhaps solace," Axel Rüger, the Frick's newly appointed director, said.

Upstairs, the Frick family's breakfast room has been restored to its reflect its original character, alongside Adelaide Frick's sitting room, which is decorated with a series of mid-18th-century decorative wall panels by François Boucher.

Joseph Godla, the Frick's chief conservator, said the most complex part of the project for him was getting every historical detail correct on the walls, drapes and other textiles, down to the microscopic level.

"The French Boiseries, as they're called, are individual panels that are put together with tongue and groove elements, and there is not a lot of room for error," Godla told Patch about the second-floor sitting room restoration, which includes painted panels with floral details and carvings.

"And then there was a historic paint research, and that was on a microscopic cross-sectional analysis," Godla said.

With raised ceiling heights and extended spaces, the museum now has room to display the collection of artworks by the old masters — which the Frick is most well-known for — as well as rotating displays of more modern and contemporary work.

Aimee Ng, the Frick's John Updike curator, was on the team that moved the entire collection off-site into a temporary location on Madison Avenue, and then reinstalled the collection at the historic mansion and curated the second floor for the first time.

"It's been years of 'Where should things go?' and 'What stories do we want to tell?'" Ng told Patch. "It was sort of like moving a museum twice. When we came back to reinstall the art in this building, there were lessons to take from the Frick Madison, like not being afraid to take up a lot of space, and that a single work of art can be powerful on its own."

One of the modern additions to Frick's collection includes a series of intricate plants placed throughout the mansion, created entirely out of porcelain, by Ukrainian artist Vladimir Kanevsky, to commemorate the reopening.

A new gift shop, as well as a cafe — a Frick first! — will also be open soon on the second floor.

For the Frick's first season back, it will host a classical and contemporary music festival in April, and a new exhibit of Vermeer’s Love Letters in June.

Learn more here. The Frick is located at 1 E 70th St. in Manhattan.

For questions and tips, email Miranda.Levingston@Patch.com.