We invite you to come with us inside one of America’s most interesting art museums – an institution that is BOTH an art gallery and a historic home.
This is the Frick Collection, located at 1 East 70th Street, within the former Fifth Avenue mansion of Gilded Age mogul Henry Clay Frick. The museum containing many pieces that the steel titan himself purchased, as well as many other incredible works of art from master painters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Goya, Turner and Whistler.
Frick himself had a rather complicated legacy. As a master financier and chairman of Andrew Carnegie‘s massive steel enterprise, Frick helped create the materials for America’s railroads and bridges.
But his intolerance of labor unions led to a bloody confrontation in the summer of 1892, making him, for a time, one of the most hated men in America.
New Yorkers’ love for the Frick Collection, however, remains far less complicated. The institution, which has been a museum since 1935, allows visitors to experience the work of the great master painters in an often regal and intimate setting, allowing people to imagine the fanciful life of the Gilded Age.
The Frick Collection reopens this month after an extensive renovation (temporarily relocating the collection to the Breuer Building for a few years) and we’ve got a sneak preview, featuring Frick curator and art historian Aimee Ng.
LISTEN NOW: THE STORY OF THE FRICK COLLECTION
The story continues next week on the Gilded Gentleman podcast — Inside The Frick Collection: The Upstairs Downstairs World of a Gilded Age Mansion
Carl talks with managing educator Caitlin Henningsesn about her work researching the domestic staff that worked in the mansion, just who they were and what they did. Caitlin and Carl also discuss, thanks to extraordinary archival records, how the Fricks entertained in a grand Gilded Age style in the very dining room visitors see today.
