The Frick Collection, widely regarded as one of the world's most beautiful museums, reopened its doors on April 17, 2025, after a five-year closure and seven years of renovation work led by architect Annabelle Selldorf. The New York institution, housed in Henry Clay Frick's former mansion on Fifth Avenue, has been transformed with careful attention to preserving its intimate character while adding essential modern functionality. At the heart of the collection remain Hans Holbein the Younger's portraits of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, which hang on opposite sides of the fireplace in the main salon, staring past each other for eternity.
Henry Clay Frick acquired Holbein's portrait of Thomas More in January 1912 for £55,000, outbidding his rival Isabella Stewart Gardner who had coveted the painting since 1896. Her advisor Bernard Berenson had even advised her that acquiring it justified any means necessary, telling her she must beg, borrow, or steal to seize the opportunity. Three years later, Frick purchased Holbein's portrait of Cromwell for £60,000, which came with a bonus Titian portrait from Irish collector Hugh Lane. These acquisitions reflected Frick's competitive approach to collecting, as he built what he intended to become a public museum after his death.
Frick lived only five years in the mansion designed by Thomas Hastings, moving in during 1914 and dying in December 1919. He specifically instructed in his will that his New York home and its contents should become a museum called The Frick Collection. The building itself represented Frick's anti-ornament philosophy, as he famously wrote to Hastings thanking him for resisting excessive decoration. After Frick's widow Adelaide died in 1931, architect John Russell Pope converted the carriage court into a marble-clad winter garden with a central fountain, creating the iconic space visitors know today.
Selldorf's renovation embodies her philosophy of making architecture invisible. Born in Cologne in 1960 and practicing in New York since 1980, she believes architecture communicates best when it doesn't draw attention to itself. Her firm added functional spaces that never existed before, including curator offices and visitor amenities, while preserving the original layout that Frick himself designed. The new auditorium sits beneath the preserved garden on 70th Street, which New Yorkers protested to protect when the museum considered expanding into that space in 2014.
The museum now occupies both the ground and first floors, with Frick's private quarters transformed into galleries. His bedroom again displays George Romney's portrait of Lady Hamilton, the first and last artwork he saw each day. The breakfast room has been restored as a showcase for the Barbizon School paintings where Frick began his collecting journey. German director Axel Rüger, who previously led the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, now oversees the institution and maintains that even the furniture placement remains sacrosanct.
What distinguishes the Frick Collection from nearly every other museum is its permanent hanging, which directors worldwide have abandoned in favor of rotating exhibitions. Selldorf's discreet interventions ensure the artworks shine without competition from the architecture itself. The renovation completes a 90-year transformation that Frick envisioned from the start—not as a preservation of his lifestyle, but as a timeless presentation of artistic masterpieces. The result is a unique museum where visitors experience art exactly as one of America's greatest Gilded Age collectors intended, now enhanced for 21st-century accessibility.
