Objects of Affection: Aimee Ng, Chief Curator of the Frick, on the Museum’s Greatest Treasures

[bright classical music]

Hi, Vogue, I m Amy Ng.

We re here in New York City.

We re at The Frick Collection,

which is a historic house on Fifth Avenue.

I m the chief curator here,

and these are the objects of my affection.

A great work of art stops you in your tracks.

It makes you think, it makes you look,

it makes you think about other people.

And to me, that s what a lot

of the art in this building does.

[bright classical music continues]

I mean, it was very, very typical

to have British portraits in a dining room,

both in England and English country houses,

and then in the American houses of those collectors

who were, in a sense, emulating their British precedents.

So, this is Gainsborough s portrait

of The Honorable Frances Duncombe.

And what she s wearing is this amazing blue satin dress

that s inspired by Van Dyke style of the previous century,

and that was sort of a masquerade thing,

it connected her to history,

but it was also showing off a lot of wealth,

so it s covered, dripping in pearls.

You can see that even the hat

that she s holding is lined in pearls.

She s carrying another little bracelet

of pearls from her hand,

and there are more pearls up woven through her hair,

which is the height of fashion in the 1770s.

It s called a pouf.

If you imagine having a portrait made

of yourself today, for example,

and you decide to choose something that s this exuberant,

sort of flamboyant, almost costume,

it s not like this is something that she would wear out.

With that standing dog tooth collar,

it just takes her out of time a little bit,

and it s just a really extraordinary expression of identity.

Well, there are five of the seven Gainsborough pictures

are here in the dining room.

A couple of busts over here.

And really an extraordinary kind of outlier

in Gainsborough s of this Mall at St. James Park.

What I love about this one is not only

are the ladies sort of in cliques,

sort of looking at each other, sizing each other up,

so are there little doggies. [laughs]

[whimsical classical music]

The evening, it gets so dark.

You sort of get this ghostly feeling.

So, we re here in the West Vestibule,

and we have four paintings,

18th century French by Francois Boucher,

and they are The Four Seasons.

And traditionally, what s funny is,

Four Seasons were sometimes illustrated by laborers,

like the work you do at every season.

Well, for Boucher, it was more like the joy

and pleasure of each season.

So, one of my favorites ones is winter over here,

where she s being pushed in this snow-decorated sleigh,

but of course, she s leaving her decolletage

all open and free.

Throughout, you can just see these tiny little details

that tell you what season it is,

but really, it s about the luxury

of living a privileged life.

It s like almost like a maximal way

of imagining living life,

and that s sort of the Vivian Westwood thing.

And so, sometimes she used Boucher images in the clothing,

sometimes she just used it in the store display,

but you could see that she was really thinking

about this historic past as a way

to almost make extreme her contemporary clothing.

[jaunty classical music]

So, this is one of the three Vermeers

that are in the collection.

And Vermeer s most famous

for these light-filled domestic spaces of women,

men talking, these wonderful materials

that you can see almost photorealistically.

And this is a perfect example.

It s called Officer and Laughing Girl.

She s holding a little glass of white wine.

He s wearing this big, broad-brimmed hat,

and there s this wall map behind them

that is so meticulously painted

that we can actually identify which map it is.

It s a 1621 map of Holland and West Friesland.

All of Vermeer s pictures are kind of like this,

that you think that there s a narrative story,

but it doesn t really tell you exactly what s going on.

So, art historians have loved to play with,

well, what s really happening here?

Is it flirtation?

Is it actually, you know, a sincere love match?

Is she a prostitute?

So, there s all these sort of rumors

that art historians have been sort of testing,

and we don t know the answer.

And I think part of the reason why these paintings

are so interesting is because

they re meant to get you thinking

and there s a little bit of a mystery around them

that keeps you coming back.

Welcome to the Corner of Power where Louis IV s scepter,

which he s holding up like this,

is matched by Bronzino s codpiece,

which is a symbol of male virility in the Renaissance.

We don t often get to talk about elements

of male fashion that went in and then out of style.

For this portrait, that codpiece, which...

Am I allowed to talk about male genitalia?

Sure. Great.

Was this element of fashion

that came into popularity around 1500.

And for 100 years, anyone who could, wore a codpiece.

Pants used to be pant leg, pant leg, flap.

Well, that flap started to grow.

It started to become a little bit of a purse.

You could put some letters in there, and more importantly,

it really symbolized the virility of the wearer.

What s interesting about it

is as soon as it goes out of fashion,

it almost becomes kind of obscene to see

because, well, for obvious reasons,

it s sort of just sticking out of there.

In the 19th century, before Frick bought this picture,

somebody on the art market had painted

over the white codpiece so that it disappeared

and it was just a little bit more reserved.

And it wasn t until the 1940s, well after Frick died,

that conservators here realized there was something

underneath, and took off the overpaint,

and there in its gleaming glory, the codpiece came back.

So, the Frick is not just about paintings and sculptures,

but also decorative arts objects,

and especially furniture like this secretaire

or sort of fall-open desk.

This is French, 18th century,

and it was made for Marie Antoinette.

The story with this is she had this

and its partner that commode made around 1770,

and then when she was arrested during the French Revolution

about 20 years later.

She wanted them brought with her

to her sort of prison rooms in the Tuileries Palace.

She brought them, but they didn t quite fit properly,

so she asked the cabinet maker to come back

and refit them for her, for her prison rooms.

She still got the royal treatment, even under incarceration.

[upbeat classical music]

Here in The Frick s living hall,

and one of the most famous paintings

in The Frick s collection

is this Venetian Renaissance picture

by Giovanni Bellini of St. Francis in the Desert.

So, we re looking at around 1470s,

which is pretty amazing to think

this large scale oil on panel painting

and such delicate glazes being made at that time.

And it s showing the saint in the desert,

so he s rejected the worldly goods

for this sort of monastic life.

This is a religious picture, but it s actually about nature.

There s kingfisher, there s sheep

with a shepherd in the back.

There s all these little surprises that really bring

to life this so-called religious scene,

but is much more about the natural world

and our place in it.

When I look at this picture,

I m always looking for something new.

I m looking to see something that I haven t before,

and even if it s something I ve noticed before,

I m seeing it differently this time.

And it s sort of this regenerating composition,

like a natural landscape.

Are we gonna go look at Diana s pudenda?

[Amy laughs]

Follow me, we re gonna go see Diana.

[gentle music]

So, this is Diana.

We re here at the apex of the Portico Gallery,

and this is an 18th century French sculpture by Houdon.

During the construction of the last four years

when we were working on The Frick s reopening,

we took all of the works of art out of The Frick,

but we left her.

And the reason was, it was more dangerous to move her

out of the building than it was to just leave her alone

and build a protective cage around her

because her entire figure is resting

on the ball of her foot,

and this, of course, is just clay.

It s baked clay.

It s a very, very sensual and fragile material.

This one in particular has an interesting sword

because one of its earlier owners prior to Frick

had a son who was getting a little bit too excited

at the sight of this very nude and beautiful figure

to the point where this previous owner

augmented part of her anatomy,

literally censored the genitalia of Diana.

That was removed, by the way.

So, our chief conservator had the great job

of having to remove the extra filling,

and she was concerned that Frick audiences

would be shocked and in horror over the true unveiling

of the truly nude Diana.

But luckily, people were okay with the nude body.

[calm music]

We re in here in the West Gallery,

and there s so much in here,

like I could just name on one wall

Rembrandt, Vermeer, Velasquez, Goya, El Greco, Turner s.

I mean, there s just so much going on in here

that you could really spend the entire day

just looking and enjoying.

Imagine that this was built for a private person

and his family of three who lived here.

It s amazing to think that soon after moving in here,

he made the decision to,

after his death and that of his wife, donate.

He would give this building and its art collection

as a public museum to the city of New York.

I m standing in front of Rembrandt s largest self-portrait.

Of all the many self-portraits he made,

this is the largest one.

And not only is it really big, he looks like a king.

He looks like he s sitting there in a throne with a scepter,

facing forward almost with a cape on.

He s gone bankrupt by now,

and so what he s painting here is kind of a figment.

It s a projection, it s a construction.

It reminds us that all of the paintings you see everywhere

are actually just paint on canvas,

and it s not about reality.

It might ve been what he looked like,

but he certainly didn t feel like a king at the time.

Along the wainscoting here is a set of buttons,

and these are call buttons made of mother of pearl,

and they re labeled Housekeeper,

Valet, Secretary, Pantry, and Butler.

They really remind us

that there were lives lived here in this building,

both of the people who were pressing these buttons

and those who would be answering those calls.

So, the second floor of The Frick s home

was not really seen by that many people.

It would really be only guests pretty much

who were staying overnight, who had come upstairs.

And we re walking right now on a rug that is without a seam,

like this was made in one long weave,

and it s a pretty amazing thing.

So, when it gets trashed by all the public

are coming in with muddy feet,

that ll be a very expensive repair.

I know you didn t really wanna hear that,

but [chuckles] that s what I think about

every time I come up, cause for the first time,

people are actually stepping on this carpet

as members of the public and not just as family guests.

[relaxing classical music]

So, we re here in The Boucher room.

It has paintings of these little babies

enacting arts and sciences

like painting and fishing and things like that.

This was Mrs. Frick s boudoir,

and I don t know if you can hear me,

but the floor is creaking [floor creaking]

a little bit differently than it did downstairs.

This is an 18th century French parquet

that s been restored and brought up here piece by piece.

What I like is this little vignette

of this little toddler doing marble sculpture.

And the little bust that he s doing

is not just any random bust,

but actually something that really existed

and was made by one of Boucher s contemporaries at the time.

So, he s incorporating sort of contemporary art

and the things that he was seeing around him.

This is the kind of room that reminds you

that The Frick is not just a collection of art in a place.

It s the whole thing together.

It s the carvings on the wall, the paintings themselves,

the furniture, all of it, even the floor

all coming together to make a masterpiece.

We re here in the Walnut Room.

This was Henry Clay Frick s bedroom,

and it is where he died in December of 1919,

just after his 70th birthday.

And in here, we have what some people refer to

as the poster girl of The Frick Collection.

This is a portrait by Ing,

the 19th century French neoclassical painter

of the Countess d Haussonville.

And why is it the poster girl?

Well, it s become so familiar to Frick visitors

that as soon as people come into the building, they re like,

Where is she?

Where s the Countess?

Even though it seems to be an instant,

like she s just come back from the opera,

the shawl s been thrown, the purse has been shown,

all of these things that give an air of informality,

the body is all wrong.

And in the drawings,

you see him actually moving the arm lower and lower.

And for those people who see this painting

for the first time, they re like,

Oh, it looks so real.

And then they start to notice that the elbow

is coming out of her hip.

And then for our physics majors,

they look in the mirror and they say,

Wait a minute, the reflection

doesn t make any sense at all.

You wouldn t be able to see the finger.

And the whole thing is this kind of game to show you

painting is this construction, it s an illusion.

He s making magic on this canvas.

[bright classical music]

These were the objects of my affection.

Thanks for watching.

[bright classical music continues]