NYMYSTERIES.COM March 13, 2021

Frick Madison is the cool name of the Frick’s temporary home (nine months? ten months?) in Marcel Breuer’s 75th Street and Madison building. The Frick mansion on 70th Street and Fifth Avenue is being renovated.  I have been to Frick Madison twice. I attended EXCLUSIVE MEMBER REVIEW DAYS, written in red and caps on the Frick invitation to members. The Frick plays the snob card well, but who expected Covid to complicate the move? We are being courted with extended membership and with a card that’s reproduced a Joseph Mallord William Turner oil with FRICK MADISON in caps in the lower left corner. I’m designated a Frick Future member. In other words, renew your membership. 

I never liked the old Whitney. It had mediocre exhibits and bad lighting. The building resembled a bunker. The best spaces were the enormous elevators and the stone paved stairwells. When the Whitney moved downtown, the Met Breuer moved in. The exhibits improved but the patrons, customers, art lovers didn’t show up. Exit the Met. There was talk of the Frick renting Guggenheim space but that didn’t work out.  

Frick Madison is brilliant. The pictures, sculpture, porcelain are beautifully mounted. The lighting is perfect.The walls are a blue with a hint of gray.  It’s a treat to see art that I’ve known in one space for years, moved around. It brightens it. This is especially true of the porcelain which I never looked at in the Mansion. Frick art gives the Breuer dignity. Shooting with your cell is firmly forbidden. That’s my excuse for no photos.