How The Frick Collection’s Young Fellows Ball Made a Splashy Return

For a certain group of New Yorkers, last Thursday’s Young Fellows Ball was as poignant as it was party-filled. Rewind two years ago to early March of 2020, on the morning of The Frick Collection’s annual gala, the event was still on. The museum’s event coordinators held onto the hope that a gala (which would be the last before The Frick Collection would close for a multi-year renovation) was a good idea until a handful of hours before the event when cancellation emails landed in everyone’s inbox. For most of the attendees, it was the first of many, many nights spent in.

2021 went without a Young Fellows Ball, so when the Upper East Side museum announced the event would return in 2022, the news itself was worth celebrating.

Hosted at Frick Madison (the museum’s temporary home at the Bruer Building while the Frick mansion receives an annex and restoration courtesy of Selldorf Architects), the benefit was themed “Modern Love.” It was a theme inspired by the Frick’s installation series Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters.

Guests interpreted the dress code in many ways. For some, it was heart-shaped embellishments on their Carolina Herrera dresses. To others, that meant festooning their tuxedo with a harness—to each their own!

Paul Arnhold, Drew Garrison, Grace Gummer, Indré Rockefeller, Sarah Hoover, and Elizabeth Kurpis served as cohosts of the event—and the latter two dazzled in sequin Carolina Herrera dresses. The event was held in partnership with the fashion label (along with Saks Fifth Avenue and First Republic Bank), but you didn’t need to check the invite to clock that—Herrera frocks were on the bodies of just about every best-dressed lady. Plus, Wes Gordon was in attendance and kindly took photos with guests who just so happened to turn up in his designs.

The night brought out young patrons of art and fashion and everyone arrived at the ground floor of the museum with lots of options. Stay in the lobby sipping cocktails from Tito’s, Desolas Mezcal, or Quinn Rosé; head downstairs to a full-on dance party orchestrated by Angel + Dren, or tour the galleries where Rembrandt s self-portraits and Vermeer’s genre paintings populate the walls. There wasn’t a wrong choice, and if you did the Young Fellows Ball right, you did all three.