At the Expanded Frick Collection, Don’t Miss These Five Newly Displayed Works

After nearly five years, the Frick Collection’s grand reopening this April has undoubtedly become New York City’s museum event of the season. From the serene Garden Court to the utterly romantic Fragonard Room, the Gilded-Age mansion’s beloved spaces and iconic holdings have never looked better. After reuniting with old favorites, however, visitors can discover dozens of new works, thanks to the museum’s Annabelle Selldorf-designed addition and the second floor, now accessible to the public for the first time. Here, learn more about five freshly displayed artworks and objects, as well as the remarkable new spaces which house them.

Joséphine Bonaparte Portrait Medal
Increasing the Frick’s display space for permanent collection objects by 25 percent, the museum’s second floor includes several galleries for small-scale sculptures, ceramics, and more. One highlight is the Medals Room, which showcases the Scher Collection of Portrait Medals—the most significant collection of medals in private hands. Flourishing across Europe from the 15th through 19th centuries, portrait medals served many functions, including documenting their subjects’ achievements and rank.

David d’Angers created medallions of more than 500 notable figures, including Joséphine Bonaparte, the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Empress Consort of France and Queen of Italy (1763–1814). “David d’Angers’s gallery of the illustrious figures of his time has forever shaped the way we picture some giants of the past,” says Giulio Dalvit, the Frick’s Associate Curator of Sculpture. “This polished medal of the Empress of the French simply dressed as a society woman, captioned with a signature rather than an inscription, ‘Lapagerie Bonaparte’—her maiden and married surname—is one of those which prompted [Honoré de] Balzac to say that while his praise of people in writing was perishable, d’Anger’s medallions would ‘survive nations’ and be rediscovered ‘amid the ashes of Paris.’”

Ingres’ Masterwork in the Making
An impressive selection of 12 works on paper is on view through 11 August, 2025 in the new first-floor Cabinet Room gallery, formerly the Boucher Room. These rarely seen drawings span the 15th through 19th centuries and include several artists well established in the Frick’s collection, such as Goya, Rubens, and Whistler. One particularly special work is Ingres’ Study for Louise, Princesse de Broglie, Later the Comtesse d’Haussonville (1845), the finished portrait of which is now on view on the second floor.

It is estimated that Ingres made 80 preparatory drawings, including full-scale studies of the raised left arm, the head, and its reflection, between 1842 and 1845 before completing the legendary painting. This sheet, depicting details of the subject’s dress, with an additional study of her skirt on the right, is among the 15 of them that survive.

Jacques de Lajoue’s Glorious Rococo Panels
While the Frick Collection is synonymous with transportive paneled rooms dedicated to Fragonard and Boucher, the newly expanded museum has upped the rococo ante. Seven panels by French architectural artist Jacques de Lajoue can be found in the new passageway connecting the mansion and the Selldorf-designed second-floor Reception Hall.

Scenes dedicated to romance, motherhood, and the pastoral are surrounded by the movement’s famed architectural flourishes, including shell-like compositions and gilded cartouches. The son of a master mason, Lajoue was known as a great painter of ornamentation

Cabinetmaking at Its Finest
Another highlight of the Frick’s restoration is the relocation of the Boucher Room upstairs where it was originally installed as part of Adelaide Frick’s boudoir, or private sitting room. The Frick’s rich decorative arts holdings include several designs by the German-born, Paris-based cabinetmaker Martin Carlin, one of the most important artisans during Louis XV’s reign. This mechanical table reflects not only Carlin’s design prowess, but also the 18th-century preoccupation for furniture that incorporates porcelain, as well as mechanical devices (the table top is lifted via a concealed system of cogwheels and supports).

“It is a wonderful and exquisite example of 18th-century furniture and innovations that were created thanks to several marchands-merciers, who were dealers of luxury goods and tastemakers at the time,” shares Marie-Laure Buku Pongo, the Frick’s Associate Curator of Decorative Arts. “The Sèvres plaques were provided by a marchand-mercier, who then supplied them to a cabinetmaker (in this case Martin Carlin), so they could be mounted on a piece of furniture.”

Corot’s Poetic Contribution to the 1861 Paris Salon
In the same vein as the Boucher Room, the new second-floor Breakfast Room features paintings in the same locations where they hung when the Frick family lived there. Several works demonstrate Mr. Frick’s interest in the 19th-century Barbizon School, whose landscapes and rural scenes may have reminded the industrialist of his upbringing in western Pennsylvania.

One standout work is Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s The Lake (1861), which the artist exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1861. This wistful scene, depicting cattle and a back-turned figure, reflect Corot’s penchant for plein-air painting. The critic J.A. Castagnary wrote of The Lake and the artist’s technique: “When [Corot] sets himself before his canvas it is—like a musician seating himself at the piano—in order to give voice to the inspiration that torments him. What he wants is to express his personal feelings, not nature that inspired them in him.”