Ian Wardropper has been the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Director of New York’s Frick Collection since 2011, during which time he has overseen plans for the renovation of the museum’s permanent home, the Henry Clay Frick House, and the collection’s temporary move to the iconic Breuer Building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where it opened under the name Frick Madison.
The museum was founded by the industrialist Henry Clay Frick and its collection of Old Master paintings and European fine and decorative arts has more than doubled in size since opening to the public in 1935. This expansion was one of the key factors behind the renovation project, which will see the space increased at the Henry Clay Frick House with the opening up of the second floor. Visitor facilities and accessibility will also be improved.
When the renovation plans were approved, the museum was in the position of having to either find a new home or move to a temporary venue. Wardropper came up with a unique solution: moving the entire collection into a building which is almost the antithesis of its usual home. The Brutalist Breuer building, which previously housed the Whitney Museum, provided some interesting opportunities, as he explained to blooloop in a 2022 interview:
“Traditionally the Frick, in some ways, is an anti-museum; we don’t show things by period. We show things in the way that a private collector would. This has been a chance for us to review our collection, we have thought about it in new ways.”
“One of the things I like about that the most is that people are starting to re-appreciate how good our collection is, how good the paintings, the decorative arts and the sculpture are. For a frequent visitor to the Frick at the mansion, the paintings can end up seeming part of the décor. But now we have stripped all that away, people can really look at the paintings. And they are reminded that it is a truly great collection.”