Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
It was the intention of the coal and steel tycoon Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) that ‘the entire public shall forever have access’ to the art-filled mansion in Manhattan where he spent his final years. Its neoclassical limestone exterior is so austere that Mary Berenson called it ‘the Frick mausoleum’. The block-long building that houses the Frick Collection opened to the public in 1935 and has undergone few changes over the years. Minimal labels have done little to disturb the illusion that the robber baron and his dutiful daughter Helen, who administered the museum for decades, have just stepped out to buy a Vermeer or another of Marie Antoinette’s sideboards. It is currently closed for renovation and expansion, the latter partly underground.