Ian Wardropper, the director of New York’s Frick Assortment, introduced that he would retire subsequent 12 months after 14 years with the museum.
Most notably throughout Wardropper’s tenure, the Frick embarked upon an bold—and at occasions controversial—$195m renovation of its house on the Beaux Arts mansion of the Nineteenth-century industrialist and artwork collector Henry Clay Frick. (Consequently, since March 2021 the Frick has quickly relocated to the Breuer Constructing, the previous web site of the Whitney Museum of American )Artwork that was just lately purchased by Sotheby’s. Wardropper will retire shortly after the official reopening of the brand new Frick, which is scheduled for late this 12 months.
“These 14 years on the Frick could have been among the many most rewarding of my profession,” Wardropper mentioned in a press release. “It has been a terrific privilege to understand these initiatives throughout my tenure, the reopening of our upgraded buildings being a spotlight amongst many. Following my retirement from the Frick, I sit up for engaged on quite a lot of scholarly and educational tasks.”
Wardropper has spent a complete of fifty years working at museums. He was the chair of European sculpture and ornamental arts on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork earlier than becoming a member of the Frick in 2011. Beforehand, he had been the curator of European ornamental arts, sculpture and historic artwork on the Artwork Institute of Chicago.
Other than spearheading the Frick’s first-ever complete renovation, Wardropper is commonly cited as having expanded the purview of the museum to past its founder’s assortment of Previous Grasp work and European ornamental artwork. This included inviting the works of up to date artists into the museum’s historic areas. The Frick’s extensively lauded Barkley L. Hendricks present is the most recent instance of the museum’s new embrace of up to date artwork—Hendricks is the primary artist of color to have a solo present on the Frick for the reason that museum’s inception in 1935.
“My purpose is to depart the establishment in good condition programmatically and financially, and that would be the case,” Wardropper instructed Robin Pogrebin of The New York Instances. “I’m hoping I can flip it over to anyone with contemporary concepts.” He added that though the museum’s board of administrators is conducting a global seek for his alternative, he hopes that the Frick’s deputy director and chief curator, Xavier F. Salomon, “can be one of many candidates”.
