Middle Ground Blog

December 16, 2021

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At Frick Madison, highlights from the collection are in conversation across media, geography, and time—often in unexpected ways. "Middle Ground" investigates surprising dialogues between pairs of works of art on view, speaking to the connections waiting to be discovered at our temporary home.

Man seated in a gallery between a trapezoidal window and Bellini's “St. Francis in the Desert”
Middle Ground: Bellini and Breuer, Odes to Light
Surprising connections are waiting to be discovered at Frick Madison. In the debut post of “Middle Ground,” explore unexpected links between Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert and Marcel Breuer’s iconic trapezoidal window, a transcendent juxtaposition on the third floor of the museum’s temporary home.
At left a painting detail of two male figures. At right a female face in anguish in bronze.
Middle Ground: Goya and Tacca, The Poetics of Metalwork
Giulio Dalvit, Assistant Curator of Sculpture, explores connections between Francisco de Goya’s painting The Forge and Pietro Tacca’s bronze statue Nessus and Deianira, made centuries apart and today found in adjacent galleries at Frick Madison. The statue is a remarkable achievement of the same type of labor depicted in Goya’s canvas, both employing metalwork as a powerful storytelling device.
At left a painting detail of a poised British general. At right a young man depicted in terracotta.
Middle Ground: Reynolds and Chinard, Capturing Fleeting Glory
The power of portraiture is particularly potent on the fourth floor of Frick Madison. Considering two seemingly unrelated likenesses on view—Reynolds’s General John Burgoyne and Chinard’s Étienne Vincent de Margnolas—Rebecca Leonard, Curatorial Assistant, examines the works’ uneasy balance between glory and tragedy, epitomizing portraiture’s poignant reflection of the human condition.