While the museum describes the 42,000-square-foot addition as something that would “further fulfill Henry Clay Frick’s long-standing vision to offer public access to its works of art," others, including a group of 51 prominent artists and architects — Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman [...] among them — think it would undermine exactly what they love about the place.
Under the banner of Unite to Save the Frick, this group sent a letter to the city, copied to the museum, expressing their displeasure.
— vulture.com
Here's the letter that Unite to Save the Frick sent to NYC leaders today:
May 6, 2015
Dear Mayor de Blasio and Chair Srinivasan:
The residential scale of the Frick Collection exerts a special power over those who walk its halls. To have visitors experience the feeling of living with art was the intention of founder Henry Clay Frick as he envisioned his personal residence being opened to the public. Up until now, the Frick’s fidelity to its founder’s vision of a “house museum” has been laudable. Those of us in the art world who cherish the unique and tranquil ambiance offered by the Frick are urging the Frick to withdraw its proposed plan and consider alternative methods of expansion that would preserve the character essential to its appeal.
As professionals working in the art world (sculptors, painters, critics, journalists, dealers, gallerists, financiers, and more), we strongly believe that the Frick’s effectiveness as a display space lies in its intimacy. Viewing highlights of the collection—whether the photorealism of Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl or the diffused softness of Renoir’s La Promenade—we are transported by the gallery’s serene environment, and encouraged to reflect on what it means to let art inhabit one’s daily life. It’s personal at the Frick, and that is a rare achievement.
The ensemble the Frick wishes to raze, composed of the Reception Hall Pavilion and the Russell Page-designed Viewing Garden on East 70th Street, is a masterstroke of the evolving museum’s design, positioning the mansion in counterpoint to the Manhattan street grid, and optimizing the “house museum” experience. Replacing the hall and garden with an institutional 106-foot tower will indeed destroy the famed Frick experience for artists and art lovers around the world.
The Frick is revered for its wise curatorial and architectural decisions, and we hope that your guidance will ensure that it does not break with this tradition. Please deny the Frick’s current expansion proposal and urge its leadership to consider the many worthy and reasonable alternatives for modernizing this one-of-a-kind gallery so beloved in the international art community.
Respectfully,
Jeff Koons, artist
Chuck Close, painter
Rachel Feinstein, artist
John Currin, painter
Helen and Brice Marden, artist
Sofia Coppola, filmmaker
Frank Stella, artist
Richard Prince, artist
Cindy Sherman, artist
Claude Lalanne, sculptor
Marc Jacobs, fashion designer
Inez van Lamsweerde, artist
Vinoodh Matadin, artist
Ben Kinmont, artist
Deborah Kass, artist
Marie Lalanne, painter
Dorothea Rockburne, painter
Sean Landers, painter Cecily Brown, artist
Walton Ford, artist
Lisa Yuskavage, artist
Rudolf Stingel, artist
Jessica Craig-Martin, artist
Nird Hod, artist
Matvey Levenstein, artist
Richard Phillips, artist
Marianne Vitale, artist
James Capper, sculptor
Laylah Ali, artist
David Salle, artist
Makoto Saito, artist
Jackie Buechner, painter
T.J. Wilcox, filmmaker
Sarah Morris, artist
Paul Branca, artist
Julian Lethbridge, artistSarah Sze, artist
Miranda Brooks, landscape architect
Simon Thoresen, architect
Irving and Jackie Blum, gallerist and art dealer
Zoe Lescaze, art journalist
Adrian Dannatt, art/architecture journalist
Nina Griscom, arts journalist
Paul Kasmin, director, Paul Kasmin Gallery
John B. Koegel, art law attorney
Barbara Chu, Emigrant Bank Fine Art Finance
Offer Waterman, gallery director, London
Eric Zetterquist, gallerist
Allegra Thoresen, Di Donna Gallery
Courtney Conway, Di Donna Gallery
Noreen Buckfire, arts patron and philanthropist
James Sharp Brodsky, philanthropist
Bruce and Maria Bockmann, art collectors
Angus Beavers, philanthropist
To learn more about the collection's debated expansion plans, visit frickfuture.org.
5 Comments
I'm glad to see such an organized resistance to this. The trend of mega-museum, especially in NYC, has become infuriating.
Enormous museums are bad for artists, for art enthusiasts, for their neighborhoods - pretty much everyone except the CEO who is pocketing the extra ticket revenue. Perhaps this is progress, now that everyone has had time to mourn the loss of the Folk Art Museum to make way for DS+R's banal MoMA shopping mall, or ventured over to Chelsea to see that mess of a new Whitney that Piano has done. Bigger does not equal better - when will art museums learn this?
Watch the parade of architects without such principles competing for this commission.
Because architects are scum, right?
Not scum, just tools...some of them anyways..
Im starting a new thing called acid-tecture...make regular buildings but give everyone viewing it acid so it looks/feels like a weird building.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.