At long last, the Frick Collection has returned to its Gilded home on Fifth Avenue. On Monday night, a few weeks ahead of the public reopening, the museum welcomed supporters for the first black-tie event since its multiyear renovation project, which saw the museum relocate to the Met Breuer building for several years. The lively reopening gala also honored Ian Wardropper, who recently retired from his post as the museum’s Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen director.
During cocktail hour, guests were able to wander throughout the museum’s gallery rooms, along with the new second-floor expansion.
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”[I] appreciate the balance of both preserving the incredible tradition of the collection, but also bringing it into the world of today with incredible attention to detail,” said Milstein, one of the Young Fellow Gala cochairs, describing the experience of stepping into the renovated space for the first time as a “true moment of homecoming.”
Milstein glanced across the room to the illuminated Bellini painting “St. Francis in the Desert,” installed between two Titian portraits. “As a college student I came back and wrote one of my very first art history essays on that work,” he said. “The fact that you’re able to take this all in, in the setting of a real home, makes this institution and collection unlike anything in New York — and in the world.”
Designer Bach Mai also has a collegiate connection to the Frick Collection: he incorporated imagery from the collection’s “The Progress of Love” series by Jean-Honoré Fragonard in his Parsons graduate collection.
”I’ve just always loved the Frick,” said Mai, who will chair the museum’s Young Fellows Ball in May. “So I’m really excited to have the Mansion back. It’s weird because five years is a long time. But also it — ” Mai clicked his fingers, indicating time snapping by. Later, he joined Milstein and guests including Ivy Getty, Jordan Roth and Richie Jackson, and Arielle Patrick for dinner in the Fragonard Room, one of the evening’s satellite dining spaces.
“This evening is the culmination of years of collaboration,” said board of trustees chair Betty Eveillard, offering the dinner’s opening remarks from the Frick’s green-walled West Gallery. “It feels wonderful to be back.”