One of my favorite kinds of museum is the private collection left as is, as the owner inhabited and furnished it and wanted it to be opened to the public. The joy in them is more due to the homey coziness and privacy one seems to invade as an uninvited guest than to the collections itself. Seeing the pictures at the Met is grateful and wonderful, but seeing those pictures in their original environment, where the collector once lived and displayed his art the way he wanted, orthodox or not, implies a special reward.
England has plenty of these private collections opened to the public as they have been for centuries. The Heritage of Palaces, Country Houses and Manors in the Great Britain is truly amazing- Many Titians, Tintorettos and Rembrandts remain sleepy hidden-but-opened in royal and wealthy houses around the famous English falsely-wild landscape. My darlings of these private collections are two in London: the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square and the Kenwood House (the Iveagh Bequest) in Hampstead, North London.
The Wallace is simply the most magnificent collection of European art in the most magnificently lavish rooms and settings. If only for the justly famous and delightful “The Swing”, Fragonard´s masterpiece and the archetype of French genre painting of the 18th century, a visit to Hertford house would be worthwhile. But there are also dozens of great Canalettos and Watteaus, and one of the best examples of the portraiture of Frans Hals, a superb Poussin and some of the most intimately enchanting works of the minor Dutch masters of the Golden Age, Pieter de Hooch and Gabriel Metsu. The Wallace is grand, big, beautiful, amazing. Except for a Vermeer, it has it almost all.
Kenwood House is a different kind of enjoyment- here is the palace and the landscape what matters the most, although the collection is masterful and has that Vermeer that the Wallace lacks. The villa, remodeled by the great Robert Adam, lays serene but powerful on a hill, overlooking an extensive view of carefully landscaped gardens, woods, pathways, bridges- complemented with eagle-views of London. The perfect image of the English landscape garden, picturesque and romantic (as manicured as the orderly French type they rejected, but artificially forested and set with fake ruins). The house is a masterpiece of Robert Adam´s English classical style, following the Roman architecture so fond to him. Adam is one of the greatest but most unrecognized (out of Britain) architects the Western Civilization has bred. He was a first-class architect, a remarkable theoretician and writer and a favorite of the royal elite of the Great Britain- in the eighteenth century, everybody wanted an Adam-designed palace. I like to compare him with Frank Lloyd Wright in twentieth century America, only Wright catered to the middle-upper working class (and occasionally to the very rich).
Regarding America, palaces and houses left as the original wealthy owner had them are not as common as in England, though the model comes from the British Islands. Thus occurs not for a deficiency in philanthropy (much on the contrary) but because the greatest private collections of this wealthy and generous nation have been bequeathed to museums and subsequently dispersed and/or decontextualized out of their original environments and settings. Which other country can claim a Met, a National Gallery, a Lacma, a thoroughly masterful, encyclopedic museum in every big city and small town, in colleges and universities, in the country and the urban knots? American philanthropy deserves a special chapter.
The most distinguished example of private collection given to public enjoyment of the arts in the United States is the Frick Collection in New York City, whose riches have no parallels but in its overseas peers like the aforementioned Wallace Collection and Kenwood House. Henry Clay Frick´s wealthy, made of coke and steel in Pittsburgh (surely over the sweat, tears and blood of many thousands of immigrants from all over the world at miserable wages, but lets focus on the philanthropy) furnished not only his mansion on Fifth Avenue but the Frick Art Reference Library near his house, his place in Pittsburgh and elsewhere with flows of cash for the arts, hospitals, universities, parks. 80% of Henry Clay Frick's $145-million wealth as bequeathed to philanthropy at the time of his death. His eleemosynary contributions rank among those of the greatest and wealthiest of America: Andrew Carnegie, Andrew W. Mellon (both from Pittsburgh), the Guggenheims and many more.
Similar museums as the one Frick gave to the people are the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston or the Philips Collection in Washington, D.C., but the masterpieces gathered by Mr. Frick have no paragon.
But why, then, is the Frick Collection the dullest and deadest of all these special museums (and probably of all kinds of museums)? If you know the Gardner Museum, you’ll be aware of their excellent program of Contemporary Art exhibitions, their artist-in-residence series (which has included in past years the likes of Juan Muñoz or Joseph Kosuth), strong music programs and brilliant education department. The Barnes Foundation, despite being burdened by a load of restrictions and prohibitions and a serious financial crisis, offers an extraordinary rich and varied series of workshops, courses, seminars. Both museums have the same core as the Frick: an unmovable collection left as joy and charge, but they seem to be on the move while the Frick languishes, unmovable, unchangeable, oldie, boring. The museum as a deadly pantheon.
Spectacularly and rather surprisingly (for me at least), The Gardner Museum has even undertaken an expansion, something very unthinkable for these small museums whose exhibition is a private collection in its original case and display manners. The much sought-after Renzo Piano will work the Gardner out, as he is doing already (towards the end) with the Pierpont Morgan Library, yet another example of these private treasures of powerful philanthropists exhibited. The Barnes, too, has recently being granted on court the permission to move to downtown Philadelphia, to escape (only in part) the strict requirements ordered by Dr. Barnes. Furthermore, what heavier burden to carry can we imagine than having to show the empty frames of the Vermeer, Rembrandt and other beloved jewels stolen like the Gardner does? And the museum performs such an onerous task with no fear if normal pain, no dramas- there's life after the awful event. And what a life! Can anybody, on the other hand, even begin to imagine what would happen to the Frick if such a horrendous crime occurred in 1 East 70?
Alright then, the Frick keeps his free-falling never-to-come death, affected only by its own gravity of nothingness. It will never die, but it always seems to be agonizing. Take this: when a curator or director steps out or in, the museum releases a press communiqué with his or her achievements and triumphs. When Samuel Sachs III stepped out of the directorship of the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1996, some of his success stories included the tripling of the museum endowment, the raising of $25.3 million from private funds and the renewal of important areas of the building; all that in the middle of the brutal and never-ending crisis that is killing Detroit since 1970 (you lovers of the ruins of Detroit know about it). Mr. Sachs went to direct the Frick Collection for six years, and stepped down in 2003. His accomplishments in that not-so-short tenure? “A website, a Collection audio and printed guide in six languages, and a new publication for members have been produced”, reads the press release from the Frick. Then, I think I fully qualify for an upscale museum directorship- my achievements as museum professional are right now in that same level.
This statement should talk clearly enough of what’s moving on the Frick Collection: nothing at all that I know, except for the habitual concerts and occasional lectures. Certainly not much for one of the best, most beloved and visited museums in the United States, and yet it is part of the paradoxical contradiction inherent to the Frick- public success, ever-soaring number of visitors; financial tightening, no activities, dullness, perennial standstill.
It kills me and bothers me every time I stroll throughout the museum (and I do quite a bit, as a member) and I get to see the venerable old ladies volunteering, the very old women at the shop whom I wouldn’t think they will be around next season, the creepy rusty oldness of the restrooms and public spaces, the highly replaceable green carpet... Everything in the Frick looks old, ancient and aged, mummified; it is all shouting for an urgent revamping, physical and mental. Some new appliances and an injection of conceptual art to scare all the old farts out there who do not conceive anything artistic done after Bouguereau. But this same staff that has already chosen the color of their coffins is probably busier, more comfortable and much more interested in hosting the fashion ball with Laura Bush and look like they all come out of Madison Avenue in the 60’s than in boosting activities, renovations and giving a younger face to the oldie Frick that would shake the smell of cadaver in every corner.
And yet, who will ever complain, having Ingres, Velazquez, Bellini, Hals, Rembrandt, Goya, El Greco, Fragonard, Boucher, Manet? The impressive collection of first-class masterpieces of Western European painting is the biggest and only attraction of the Frick Collection, but for his immense power, also his most dangerous weapon, that that apparently has the team of movers of the place more stuck and sleepy than a reliquarium (I wonder how’s the daily schedule of the director there).
All in all, I can imagine the exchange of words between those two admirable philanthropists of America, Isabella Stewart Gardner and John Clay Frick if they could see the fate of their museums today (considering the enormous differences in their collections):
Drop dead, John.
