The Frick has announced the planned return to its permanent home on East 70th Street. Photo by Flickr user ajay_suresh.
On March 18, 2021, the Frick Collection made the temporary move to its current location at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street. The Breuer Building, as the venue is known, was completed in 1966, serving as the third home of the Whitney Museum of American Art until October 2014, when it moved to its current location downtown.
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Now, after more than two years at Breuer, the Frick has announced the planned re-opening of its iconic permanent home at 1 East 70th Street. As reported on Artnet, the space will be open to the public in late 2024, with operations at the Breuer winding down through the beginning of the same year. But before the temporary space is closed on March 3, the Frick has planned a show of portraits by Barkley L. Hendricks, a new site-specific mural by artist Nicolas Party, and a fall 2023 exhibition that director Ian Wardropper has described as “a way of going back to our roots.”
The Breuer Building in 2019 (as the Met Breuer). Photo by Flickr user ajay_suresh.
The Frick’s permanent location once served as the townhouse of Henry Clay Frick and was established as a museum after his death in 1919. Once described by the New York Times as being “encased in marble and mahogany, trimmed with velvet and gold,” the reopened museum will feature newly revitalized rooms, conservation laboratories, and an auditorium. And, for the first time ever, visitors will be able to enter the second floor, which once served as living quarters.
As for the Breuer building, the future is a little less clear. The continued owner of the space, The Whitney, has considered selling the building, with Artnet speculating on whether a potential sale could mean future development. Those who will miss the Frick Breuer may take solace in this series of reflections by curators remembering The Met’s short tenure in the there. In the words of Nina Diamond, “when I conjure up memories of The Met Breuer, they’re directly shaped by the structure itself. That’s just how Breuer designed it: as a work of art in its own right, in conversation with what’s on display.”
