In Oscar Wilde's novel The image of Dorian Gray (1890), Lord Henry, after having met the namesake character of the novel, exclaims: “You are too charming to go to philanthropy, M. Gray – far too charming.” This declaration, with which Lord Henry flats Mr. Gray, designates a toxic relationship between charity and charm. If we fail in the second, the first helps to remedy the situation.
Visiting the recently renovated mansion of Henry Clay Frick on Fifth Avenue, it's like walking through the own photo of Dorian Gray thief. While the portrait of Wilde absorbed the sins of his goalkeeper, the museum is the concerted attempt of the Frick to undress.
FRICK especially succeeded in its mission, because its name today, like that of its trading partner, Andrew Carnegie, still designates the wealth and its associated philanthropy. Between 1883 and 1929, Carnegie, for example, financed the construction of more than 2,500 libraries worldwide (1,795 in the United States). These buildings, including 67 in New York Alone, are still often called the Carnegie libraries and help to break the cruelty of the richest man in the world at the time, which exploited its workers while ensuring that they did not unionize. But what is often overlooked about its generosity is that around 225 cities and villages have rejected the charity of Carnegie because of its business practices. Speaking of libraries, Carnegie is cited According to the saying: “The free libraries maintained by the people are cradles of democracy, and their spread can never fail to prolong and strengthen the democratic idea, the equality of the citizen, the royalty of man.” The rich, in particular those who have oligarchic tendencies, such as Carnegie and Frick, often find ways to rewrite history.
The FRICK collection, for its part, is a real treasure by most calculations. Its three vermeers represent about 10% of all the paintings of the old Dutch master, while his butcher room, Fragonard's Progress of love Series (1771-1773), and other French royal paintings rival rival anywhere outside Europe and have even set up the most of Metropolitan Museum of Art encyclopedia above the fifth avenue. His self-portrait Rembrandt (among other works by the beloved artist), his Bellinis, his Van Dycks, his Gainsboroughs, Goyas, Hals, Turners and El Greecos would all be superstars in less rich institutions, but here, they hudd down together in the Supreme Court in Earth's court shaped by FRICK itself.
This week, the museum opens its doors after a renovation and an expansion of several years, led by Selldorf Architects under the Executive Architect Beyer Blinder Belle. Much of 220 million dollars have been spent on conservation and renovation, which makes space refreshed rather than transformed. Architects Seldorf are known for their major projects in the art world, including the Neue Galerie, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Ontario art gallery and the Rubell Museum. Here, the firm has provided a conservative but contemporary vision of traditional forms, offering little but the corporate aesthetics for which it is known. Of course, it is not offensive – but it is not inspired either. His biggest competence spectacle is that it remains away from real stars: the works themselves.
The most notable additions are the new reception area, a bookstore and an extended coffee, newly built temporary galleries, a new theater and the opening of the Frick family on the second floor, which in recent decades have served as staff offices. The reception area is disappointing, resembling a place of wedding Staid, while the bookstore and coffee are certainly welcome but just as non -adventurous. Although the temporary exhibition space is not yet opened, I imagine that everything would be better than this strangely cramped and nest base which preceded it. The theater is pleasant and spacious, although its style is incongruous with the rest of the museum and would have been more suitable for biological modernism of Guggenheim further. Nevertheless, it is a comfortable space and a appreciated addition.
It was nice to be able to review the paintings. Many of these works are taught to art students worldwide; It is difficult not to feel something when meeting the same works that adorn high school manuals or beloved art books. More than half of the museum's works and 30% of the paintings were acquired after Frick mixed the fatal coil – 700 in number at the time of the legacy and reaching 1,800 today.
Some of the new pictorial additions, including a 16th century portrait of Giovanni Battista Moroni – The first portrait of a woman of the time to enter the museum collection – and a landscape By Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot is currently exposed. The museum stresses that Moroni's little work is the most important Italian Renaissance painting to enter his collection in half a century.
The conservatives have paid great attention to recreate certain parts to evoke the time of money. A group of schools in Barbizon works in the “Breakfast Room” upstairs is presented exactly as they were when Frick lived in the house. They play a special role in the collection because this art school was the bridge of money to collection. Also on the second floor, a 15th century profile portrait by Bellini which has long been limited to restricted staff areas is now evident in the new medal rooms, alongside Dozens of medallions the museum has acquired in recent years.
The money has always been notoriously conservative. Even in 2014, it's briefly authorized then re-reproduced Photography in the galleries, a policy on which they always insistAnd children under the age of 10 are prevented from entering. The institution as a whole looks like a time capsule, but also an aesthetic orgy of wealth and excess. American philanthropy often has a clearly individualistic sensation, echoing more important trends in culture, and this museum clearly shows that it is Frick itself, more than art, which is celebrated. When collectors acquire such important works with famous pedigrees, do they not also acquire their auras? We simply do not talk about the reason why the rich construction institutions like this, those clearly designed to distort the realities of their lives.
If museums are ideally for education (in fact, their non-profit status depends on this), what do we do if fictions shot by benefactors and their inherited projects are hindering this mission? Shouldn't the Frick collection at the very least set up a permanent screen that contextualizes the gold pot that he had accumulated at the time of his death in 1919 ($ 145 million, roughly equivalent to $ 2.9 billion today) And How he has raised an extraordinary wealth? The philanthropy of Frick often rejects the same people as his charity was allegedly designed to help, and today, with a price of $ 30 for entry (the hours of payment-you you are with the very annoying niche of Wednesday afternoon), it is unlikely that anyone, but rich visitors and upper middle class will not be able to regularly enjoy the collection.
A museum like the FRICK collection can teach us a lot about our own historical moment, because today's oligarchs hope to return to the world whose thieves were only dreaming. But that does not mean that we should not continue to try to reinvent museums. More recently, the search for researchers as EUSSONGU KIM We challenge us to rethink the relationship between museums, art and patronage. In his book The collection policy (2024), Kim written on artistic institutions,
Rather than a progressive story of new global culture is the wealth dispossessed in the new colonial world which maintains the traditions and artifacts of old World Order; The United States is responsible for the role of world leader because of its commitment to the continuum of colonial domination. It is by design that this continuum is duly extended through the composition of the advice and price committees of the contemporary museum.
This world's counterfort is nowhere more apparent than in money, where the novelty of its accomplishment is masked in the old world.
The dying Andrew Carnegie offered a last meeting with money after two decades, perhaps to relieve his conscience after the fallout from the infamous Family ownership From 1892, which led to the death of seven attackers and the injury of 11 others. Frick, clearly still angry, replied: “Tell him that I will meet him in hell.”
Although it can be attractive to think of the two Satans of the capital of the Adhesive Age of America in the fires of the Nether world, many of us can be grateful that one of them has left this little Eden patch behind. But as the legendary garden, planted inside is a precious apple, and visitors will have to taste it or not.
By browsing the museum, I dream that perhaps one day, he will reject the global nostalgia that a large part of the institution represents, and it will kiss something really new. Perhaps one day we will arrive at its doors before to see that it has been renamed after George W. RutterThe veteran of the civil war who died of injuries he suffered during the battle of Homestead in 1892. The Rutter collection may not have the same ring at the moment, but it would be a more specific way to heal the wound that Frick helped to do, what an art museum has never been able. Perhaps that day, what Frick has left represents the new culture of which we can all be proud.
THE FRICK collection (1 East 70th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan) will see the public on April 17, and admission is $ 30 for adults, $ 22 for the elderly and disabled visitors, $ 17 for students, while these 10 to 17 years are admitted for free when accompanied by an adult. Young people under the age of 10 are not admitted, while the museum is a paid entry on what yourself on Wednesdays from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
