One of the most important and beneficial changes to the cultural life of New York City stands imperiled by a single article in The New York Times.
A little over a month ago, the Frick Collection announced ambitious plans to expand for the first time in nearly half a century — but in a way that the collection’s founders intended when they opened to the public in 1935.
Because the exterior of the Frick has landmark status, the plan needs formal approval from the city Landmarks Preservation Commission — and Times critic Michael Kimmelman may have triggered the sort of hysteria that could prompt the LPC to balk.
In an ill-considered piece last week, Kimmelman reflexively opposed the Frick plan — not so much on its own merits, as on the palpable demerits of other recent expansions by New York cultural institutions.
Sorry: That MoMA, the Morgan Library and the Whitney have all expanded, for better or worse, doesn’t mean the Frick shouldn’t have the right to expand or that it will fall into the same trap as others have before.
The substance of Kimmelman’s argument is a desire to save the Frick’s small outdoor garden at the back, and his advocating that additional spaces should be built above the museum’s existing structure.
Yet the latter idea isn’t on the table: It would require that the museum close, as the present proposal does not, and would alter the exterior of the museum in a way that Landmarks surely wouldn’t, and shouldn’t, allow.
The garden is indeed pleasant, but it was built only as filler back in the ’70s, precisely until the Frick could raise the money for the expansion that is now proposed.
By the way, neither the garden nor the Frick’s interior is landmarked, and the proposed alterations to the exterior are minimal, other than that they would add to the existing structure.
Yet what is most important is that the reasons to alter and expand the Frick are far more compelling than the option to do nothing.
About a decade ago, the Frick began to offer more temporary public exhibits, which have proved some of the best in New York. But most have been held in a low-ceilinged basement, constrained by the limits of that space. The new proposal plans for a far larger space, with natural light, above ground.
Also, although most visitors don’t realize it, they’re really seeing only about half of the Frick: The second floor, which would make a great museum experience all by itself, has never been shown to the public.
The expansion would, for the first time, allow these astonishing rooms to be opened up for everyone to see.
As regards architectural aesthetics, the Frick today is, in fact, a complex of three separate building programs, from 1914, 1935 and 1977.
Part of the 1935 expansion was an art history library, one of the finest ever assembled.
Yet most visitors never realize it exists, because it feels — architecturally speaking — entirely divorced from the rest of the institution. The proposal would unite it with the rest of the Frick for the first time.
And the way in which it would be united is the best part of the expansion plan. Designed by Davis Brody Bond, the proposal would integrate all the parts of the museum via the addition of an annex to the east — exactly as the trustees intended back in the 1930s.
Its massing would suit the present structure even better than what is there now. The published renderings of the expansion, though provisional, are mightily impressive and, with regard to shape and classical detail, seem exactly right.
Because the Frick is one of the most serious and high-minded cultural institutions in New York, I have absolutely no doubt that its trustees have the wisdom to expand far more wisely than did MoMA and the Morgan.
As long as the Landmarks Preservation Commission doesn’t stand in its way, the Frick will get it right.
James Gardner, formerly the art critic for The Post, is the architecture critic for The Real Deal.