After a five-year closure, the Frick Collection in New York will reopen to the public on 17 April and this week opened its doors to the press. The Gilded Age mansion, created on Fifth Avenue for the industrialist Henry Clay Frick, has been restored and enhanced by Selldorf Architects, with the executive architect Beyer Blinder Belle.
It is the biggest upgrade to the building since it first became a museum in 1935. Ben Luke talks to the architect Annabelle Selldorf.

The Garden Court at the Frick
Photo: Joseph Coscia Jr.
Then, Cabelle Ahn, a contributor to The Art Newspaper and a specialist in 18th-century art, joins us to review the transformed museum.

Taiso Yoshitoshi, A woman abalone diver wrestling with an octopus (around 1870)
Photo: Wellcome Collection
This episode’s Work of the Week is A woman abalone diver wrestling with an octopus (around 1870), a woodblock print by the Japanese artist Taiso Yoshitoshi. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, discusses the work with James Russell, the curator of a new exhibition, Undersea, at Hastings Contemporary in the UK.
- The Frick Collection opens on 17 April
- Undersea, Hastings Contemporary, 29 March-14 September.