NEW YORK, NY.- The Frick Collection announces a banner year for new and forthcoming publications, released around the time of the highly anticipated reopening of its renovated Fifth Avenue home, in April 2025. These books provide fresh insights into the museum’s origins, its historic home, and the masterworks in its holdings.

“This is a significant moment for the Frick’s publications, which have been consistently lauded and have continued to grow in scope in recent years. We are excited not only to welcome visitors back to enjoy our art and buildings in person, but also to provide them with numerous reading opportunities to delve deeper into all that the museum has to offer,” commented Ian Wardropper, the Frick’s outgoing Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Director and author of two of the forthcoming publications.

Among the titles released throughout 2025 are two new volumes in the Frick’s popular Diptych series—which illuminates individual works from the collection—two books on the Frick’s buildings and their renovation and enhancement, and a catalogue accompanying the exhibition Vermeer’s Love Letters. Other books explore the collecting habits of Henry Clay Frick and his family, along with the largely untold stories of their household staff. Additionally, a new extensive guide with up-to-date research on highlights from the museum’s permanent collection is now available.

Aimed at fostering greater appreciation of its remarkable collection, exhibitions, and history, the Frick’s publications program is crucial to its scholarly and educational mission. Through catalogues and other works featuring the highest caliber of research, the publications offer new perspectives on the Frick and its holdings and make cutting-edge contributions to the field of art history.

The Frick Collection—Essential Guide
By Aimee Ng, with Giulio Dalvit and Marie-Laure Buku Pongo

This guide to highlights of the Frick’s permanent collection conveys the range and depth of the museum’s holdings, covering paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts. Spanning the period from about 1300 to 1900, the publication underscores the connections and diversity among contemporaneous artistic production in Europe through the centuries. This invaluable reference and visual record for art lovers reintroduces the Frick’s remarkable holdings and presents many new acquisitions at a pivotal moment in its history.

The Frick Collection—Essential Guide was published in November 2024 by The Frick Collection in association with Paul Holberton Publishing. The 176-page paperback volume includes 162 color illustrations ($25, member price $20).

Bruegel’s Three Soldiers (Frick Diptych)
By Anna-Claire Stinebring and Salman Toor

The Frick’s Three Soldiers is one of only three signed works in the United States by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, one of the great Netherlandish painters of the sixteenth century. Once in the collection of Charles I of England, the small panel in grisaille represents a trio of Landsknechte, mercenary foot soldiers whose flamboyant costumes and poses were a popular subject for printmakers of the period. An essay by Anna-Claire Stinebring—Curator of European Painting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and former Anne L. Poulet Curatorial Fellow at the Frick—examines the artistic and political environment of the time and the ways in which a colorful subject is transformed by its translation into monochrome. Stinebring’s text is paired with a contribution by figurative painter Salman Toor, who was a participant in the Frick’s celebrated installation series Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters.

Designed to foster critical engagement and to interest specialists and non-specialists alike, each book in the Frick Diptych series illuminates a single work in the museum’s rich collection with an essay by a current or recent Frick curator, paired with a contribution from a contemporary artist, writer, or cultural figure.

Bruegel’s Three Soldiers will be published on January 28, 2025, by The Frick Collection in association with D Giles Ltd. The 72-page hardcover volume includes 38 color illustrations ($29.95, member price $23.96).

Goya’s The Forge (Frick Diptych)
By Xavier F. Salomon and Hisham Matar

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes is among the most important Spanish artists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A late masterpiece, his The Forge derives from the mythological theme of the forge of Vulcan, the metalworker of the Olympian gods. However, the figures in Goya’s monumental, haunting painting—a favorite among generations of Frick visitors—are instead muscular, everyday laborers at work around a blacksmith’s anvil. A deeply researched text by Xavier F. Salomon, the Frick’s Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, is complemented by a lyrical piece by novelist, essayist, and memoirist Hisham Matar.

Goya’s The Forge will be published on March 4, 2025, by The Frick Collection in association with D Giles Ltd. The 72-page hardcover volume includes 45 color illustrations ($29.95, member price $23.96).

The Fricks Collect: An American Family and the Evolution of Taste in the Gilded Age
By Ian Wardropper, with a foreword by Julian Fellowes

Before his New York home became a museum, Henry Clay Frick engaged some of the most important art dealers and decorators of his time to build a renowned collection and create suitable Gilded Age interiors to accommodate it. In this new book, Ian Wardropper, the Frick’s Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Director, traces the journey that led to the creation of one of America’s finest art collections. With a focus on Henry and his daughter Helen, Wardropper weaves a fascinating tale of ambition, wealth, and cultural patronage, complemented by rich imagery showcasing the family’s masterpieces and sumptuous interiors in Pittsburgh; Prides Crossing, Massachusetts; and New York City. Julian Fellowes—actor, writer, director, and producer known for creating Downton Abbey and The Gilded Age—contributes a foreword to this engaging narrative.

The Fricks Collect will be published on March 11, 2025, by The Frick Collection in association with Rizzoli Electa. The 168-page hardcover volume includes 129 illustrations ($50, member price $40).

Vermeer’s Love Letters
By Robert Fucci

This catalogue accompanies an exhibition of the same name, the first to be held in the Frick’s new special exhibitions galleries (June 18–September 8, 2025). Focused on the motif of letter writing in Vermeer’s oeuvre, the show unites three iconic paintings by the Dutch master in which elegantly dressed women eagerly engage in correspondence, subtly hinting at themes of love and longing: Mistress and Maid (The Frick Collection), The Love Letter (Rijksmuseum), and Woman Writing a Letter, with Her Maid (National Gallery of Ireland). Through meticulous analysis, the exhibition’s guest curator Robert Fucci, lecturer at the University of Amsterdam, explores the thematic undercurrents that connects these masterpieces, shedding light on Vermeer’s legacy and his ability to capture moments of intimacy with unparalleled depth.

Vermeer’s Love Letters will be published on April 29, 2025, by The Frick Collection in association with Rizzoli Electa. The 112-page hardcover volume includes 60 color illustrations ($37.50, member price $30).

A Design for Continuity and Change: The Frick Collection
By Ian Wardropper and Annabelle Selldorf, with Barry Bergdoll and Richard Southwick and a photographic essay by Hélène Binet

This richly illustrated book celebrates the 2021–25 renovation and enhancement of The Frick Collection, the institution’s first comprehensive upgrade since its opening to the public in 1935. Included are texts on the history and context of this ambitious project, the selection of the award-winning New York-based firm Selldorf Architects, the goals of the project and how they were met, and the preservation issues and strategies. The publication complements a visit to the reopened Frick, exploring Selldorf’s ingenious, pragmatic solutions that maintain a sensitive respect for the Frick’s history and character.

A Design for Continuity and Change is authored by Ian Wardropper, the Frick’s Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Director, and architect Annabelle Selldorf, along with Barry Bergdoll (Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University and former curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art) and Richard Southwick (Partner and Director of Historic Preservation at Beyer Blinder Belle and executive architect of the Frick’s renovation). In addition to plans and elevations and images of the refurbished interiors and exteriors, the book includes a photographic essay by leading architectural photographer Hélène Binet.

A Design for Continuity and Change will be published in the summer of 2025 by The Frick Collection in association with Paul Holberton Publishing. The 176-page hardcover volume includes approximately 175 color illustrations ($55, member price $44).

One East Seventieth Street: The Historic Interiors of The Frick Collection
By Xavier F. Salomon, with photography by Miguel Flores-Vianna

When planning his future New York City home, Henry Clay Frick set his architect the task of constructing a “comfortable, well-arranged house…in good taste, and not ostentatious.” Published in conjunction with the Frick’s reopening in 2025, following its major renovation project, this book is an exploration of the historic spaces of the mansion that Frick and his family occupied and filled with the taste of the time. Salomon, the Frick’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator, deftly outlines the use of each space, which often evolved over the years, and discusses the works of art that Frick, and later his daughter Helen and the curators of the museum, chose to display.

In addition to the first-floor spaces visitors know and love, this book explores the domestic rooms on the second floor, which have been transformed into a suite of new galleries. The text is complemented by archival images and new photography by renowned architectural photographer Miguel Flores-Vianna.

One East Seventieth Street will be published in the summer of 2025 by The Frick Collection in association with Rizzoli Electa. The 224-page hardcover volume includes approximately 100 color illustrations (price TBD).

Porcelain Garden: Vladimir Kanevsky at The Frick Collection
By Xavier F. Salomon

When The Frick Collection opened in 1935, the museum’s newly unveiled galleries and its exquisite collection were complemented by beautiful bouquets of flowers selected by Henry Clay Frick’s daughter Helen. This publication celebrates a forthcoming installation coinciding with the Frick’s reopening ninety years later—approximately thirty commissioned works by sculptor Vladimir Kanevsky (b. 1951, Ukraine) that echo the 1935 floral arrangements. Known for his lifelike porcelain flowers, Kanevsky has created opulent sculptures in dialogue with pieces on display in the permanent collection galleries, including the museum’s significant porcelain holdings. The text by Salomon, the Frick’s Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, explores the intricacy of Kanevsky’s work and its connections to the objects and spaces within the museum.

Porcelain Garden: Vladimir Kanevsky at The Frick Collection will be published in the summer of 2025 by The Frick Collection. This 128-page hardcover volume includes approximately 90 color illustrations (price TBD).

Untold Stories: Domestic Service at the Frick Mansion, 1914–1931
By Caitlin Henningsen, with a foreword by Colm Tóibín

Henry Clay Frick and his Gilded Age mansion at 1 East 70th Street have been the subjects of numerous publications, but the staff that ran the household has been largely absent from such studies. When Frick, his wife Adelaide, and their daughter Helen moved into the house in 1914, some thirty individuals worked onsite, a number that was extraordinary even at the time. This revelatory book delves into the lives and stories of a handful of these employees, offering a social and historical exploration based on archival material—some published here for the first time—that repopulates the house and provides critical insight into the work it required to run.

Written by Caitlin Henningsen, the Frick’s Managing Educator for Research and Teaching, the text is accompanied by color and black-and-white images, a combination of archival and family photographs that brings faces to the names of the past. At this pivotal moment in the Frick’s history, this publication anchors the late Gilded Age mansion in a particular historical moment—New York in the 1910s and 20s—and helps readers see it as a place with more than one story to tell. Henningson’s text will be complemented by a foreword by the critically acclaimed Irish writer Colm Tóibín.

Untold Stories will be published in November 2025 by The Frick Collection in association with Paul Holberton Publishing. The 128-page hardcover volume includes approximately 45 illustrations (price TBD).