Spent yesterday morning at The Frick Collection. An amazing collection of paintings, sculptures, French furniture, porcelains, and plenty more. They’re all housed in a private house built for, and lived in by Mr Henry Clay Frick, who died in 1919 and requested in his Will that it became a museum. I watched a 12 minute video in the Music Room about Frick’s life, how he made his money, what he collected and why, where from, and how the house became what it is today. This was a useful scene-setter, as there was no other interpretation (apart from an audio guide which focussed on key works).
Good to head somewhere very different - though the welcome was still based on making sure you hand over your dollars. But I’m coming to terms with the fact that that’s how it works over here. The Frick doesn’t allow children under the age of 10 into the museum - ‘because few ropes are used to guard fragile objects’ according to the leaflet. Considering one of Frick’s Will requests was to ensure that the place be used for education, this seems rather odd. Although they do have a very good education programme in operation, as Catherine found out. There was a docent 15 minute ‘introduction’ to the Collection, at 11am and 2pm, but no tour of the rooms/key works. Sign language users can opt for an interpreted tour of the Collection - once a month. No permanent provision is provided.
Off to Brooklyn Museum today and I’m sure this will be different again.
I'm a freelance marketer. I mainly work with arts organisations across the Northwest and Yorkshire but I do some non-arts stuff too. 