Jerry Saltz at The Vulture:
Square foot for square foot, the Frick has the densest concentration of masterpieces in America, installed alongside decorative objects in gloriously stuffy interiors. The art historian Bernard Berenson once sniffed that the Frick, founded by the morally compromised robber-baron philanthropist Henry Clay Frick, was just a “mausoleum.” Not true! Since Frick’s 1919 death, this stupendous museum has added countless gifts and acquisitions. A Watteau entered the collection in 1991. At the entrance is a wild Murillo self-portrait painted on a trompe l’oeil stone block that was added in 2014. At the Frick, we commune with the ages.
After a four-year absence for renovations, during which the collection was transported to the brutalist Breuer building on Madison Avenue, the Frick is happily back in its bigger, better Fifth Avenue manse. The cramped Music Room has been reclaimed as gallery space; the 70th Street Garden, created in 1977 by Russell Page, is intact; and although a new look-at-me staircase seems squished into the building, there is a sexy underground auditorium, a 60-seat café, and the entire second floor of the mansion is now filled with art. There’s almost twice as much on view now. What’s not to love?
more here.
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