Xavier F. Salomon

In connection with his current installation at Frick Madison, artist Nicolas Party sits down for a conversation with Xavier F. Salomon, the Frick’s Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator. Party discusses the inspirations and themes that informed his mural, why he finds the ephemeral nature of his installations liberating, and his fascination with Rosalba Carriera, the “queen of pastel.”

Take a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Frick Madison’s new site-specific mural by Nicolas Party.

To create the mural, the artist took inspiration from the history of pastels and from the Frick’s Portrait of a Man in Pilgrim’s Costume by Rosalba Carriera.

Xavier F. Salomon, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, takes us behind the scenes into the revitalization of the Boucher Room—one of the most exciting aspects of The Frick Collection’s renovation and enhancement project. Named for its paintings by François Boucher and his workshop, the Boucher Room (formerly installed on the ground floor) is returning to its original location upstairs, where it was once Adelaide Frick’s private sitting room.

With only three weeks left to see The Eveillard Gift at Frick Madison, Xavier F. Salomon, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, reflects on Degas’s exquisite drawing of his young cousin. The drawing epitomizes a shared quality among the works on paper in the exhibition, many of which appear to give an intimate look into both artist and subject.

The work is on view at Frick Madison through February 26, 2023, in The Eveillard Gift.

Xavier F. Salomon, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, shares his reflections on an exciting new addition to the collection: a stunning pastel sketch by one of the leading female artists of the eighteenth century. The work is on view at Frick Madison through February 26, 2023, in The Eveillard Gift.

Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842)
Head of a Woman, 1784
 

You asked and we listened! Based on The Frick Collection’s acclaimed video series of the same name, the Cocktails with a Curator book is now available. Here, watch as curators Xavier F. Salomon, Aimee Ng, and Giulio Dalvit reflect on the unexpected popularity of the series and their excitement to share engaging histories of Frick artworks, paired with themed drinks, with readers around the world. Cheers!

Artist Salman Toor joins Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon for a conversation about  Museum Boys, his painting on view at Frick Madison through January 16, 2022, as part of the year-long project  Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters. Salman recounts moving from Pakistan to the United States, his lifelong interest in Western artistic traditions, finding safety and empowerment through painting, and revisiting his “Vermeer phase” at the Frick.

In the final episode of Cocktails with a Curator, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon bids audiences farewell with a discussion of Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac by James McNeill Whistler, the best-represented artist at the Frick with twenty works in the collection.

In this week’s episode of Cocktails with a Curator, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon discusses The Three Soldiers by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, one of only a few works by the artist outside Europe. Bruegel is best known for his lively and often comical peasant scenes, but here he takes as his subject three landsknechts, or German mercenary foot soldiers.