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The Frick Collection: old masters in a mansion on Fifth Avenue

The Frick is what a great private collection looked like before museums took them over. The paintings hang in the rooms of the house, above the furniture, where their owner put them.

What it is
Museum
Time to allow
1.5 to 2 hours
Cost
Ticket
Best time
A weekday afternoon

New York this week

    Why the Frick Collection is worth it

    Henry Clay Frick made a fortune in coke and steel in Pittsburgh and spent a large part of it on European painting. In 1914 he moved into a house built for him and for the pictures at 1 East 70th Street, designed by Thomas Hastings. He left both to the public. After his widow's death the house was turned into a museum, which opened on 16 December 1935.

    It holds about 1,500 works, and its strength is quality, not number. Frick bought portraits and landscapes of the first rank and almost nothing else: Holbein, Titian, El Greco, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Gainsborough, Turner, Ingres.

    The house closed in 2020 for the largest renovation in its history and reopened on 17 April 2025. For the first time the upper floor, where the family lived, is open as galleries.

    What to see

    1. The Living Hall

      Holbein's portraits of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, enemies in life, face each other across the fireplace. Opposite hangs Giovanni Bellini's St Francis in the Desert, the saint stepping out of his cell into the light.

    2. The three Vermeers

      Officer and Laughing Girl, Girl Interrupted at Her Music, and Mistress and Maid, the last painting Frick bought. Only a few museums in the world have as many.

    3. The West Gallery

      The long picture gallery of the house: Rembrandt's self-portrait of 1658, enthroned like a king in a gold tunic, with Velázquez's Philip IV and Turner's harbours.

    4. The Fragonard Room

      The Progress of Love, a set of large panels that Fragonard painted for a mistress of Louis XV, who sent them back. They line a drawing room made to fit them.

    5. The Garden Court

      A glass-roofed court with a pool and a fountain, built when the house became a museum. It is the place to sit between rooms.

    How to do it well

    • Entry is at a set time and the house is small. Book ahead, above all at weekends.
    • Photographs are not allowed in the galleries.
    • Allow an hour and a half. It is a museum to go round slowly, and twice.
    • The Met is ten blocks north along the park and the Guggenheim six beyond that. The three make a day on Fifth Avenue.
    • Works are sometimes moved between the two floors since the reopening. Ask an attendant if you cannot find one.

    Where it is

    Address

    1 East 70th Street, at Fifth Avenue

    Nearest station

    68th Street-Hunter College (6), about ten minutes on foot

    Museums and sights nearby

    Distances are in a straight line.

    Tickets and tours: The Frick Collection

    The Frick Collection: common questions

    Is the Frick Collection open again?
    Yes. The house on East 70th Street reopened on 17 April 2025 after a renovation that had closed it since 2020. The upper floor is open to visitors for the first time.
    What is the Frick Collection famous for?
    For old master paintings shown in the rooms of a Fifth Avenue mansion: three by Vermeer, Rembrandt's self-portrait of 1658, Holbein's Thomas More, Bellini's St Francis in the Desert and Fragonard's The Progress of Love.
    How long do you need at the Frick?
    About an hour and a half. The collection is small and every work in it is worth stopping at.
    How much time do you need for the Frick Collection?
    Allow 1.5 to 2 hours. That is this site's estimate for an unhurried visit.

    What visitors say about the Frick Collection

    Rating from Google

    4.6

    5,116 ratings on Google

    Google's figures as read on 7 October 2026.

    Read every review on Google

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