Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
FRICK COLLECTION
1 E 70th St at Fifth Ave. Subway #6 to 68th St.
212 288 0700,
www.frick.org
. Tues-Sat 10am-6pm, Sun
11am-5pm. $20; pay what you wish Sun 11am-1pm.
MAP
Built in 1914 for Henry Clay Frick, probably the most ruthless of New York's robber bar-
ons, this handsome pile is now the tranquil home of the
Frick Collection
, displaying art-
work from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Opened in 1935, the museum has
been largely kept as it looked when the Fricks lived there. Much of the furniture is heavy
eighteenth-century French, but what sets it apart from most galleries - and the reason many
rate the Frick so highly - is that it strives hard to be as unlike a museum as possible. There
is no wall text describing the pictures, though you can dial up info on each work using hand-
held guides.
This legacy of Frick's self-aggrandizement affords a revealing glimpse into the sumptuous
life enjoyed by the city's big industrialists, while the collection includes paintings by Con-
stable, Reynolds, Hogarth, Gainsborough, Goya, Bellini, El Greco, Titian and Vermeer. The
West Gallery
holds Frick's greatest prizes: two Turners, views of Cologne and Dieppe; and
a set of piercing self-portraits by Rembrandt, along with his enigmatic
Polish Rider
. Also
unmissable are Holbein's famous portraits of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell in the
Living Hall
, and Vermeer's stunning
Officer and a Laughing Girl
.
At the far end of the West Gallery you will find a tiny chamber called the
Enamel Room
,
named after the exquisite set of mostly sixteenth-century Limoges enamels on display.
