Exhibitions
Current
Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture
February 12 to May 25, 2026
Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture explores the relationship between works by period-defining English artist Thomas Gainsborough and fashion, a concept and industry that touched nearly every aspect of British society in the eighteenth century.
The museum's first special exhibition dedicated to the artist—and the first devoted to Gainsborough's portraiture ever held in New York—this show brings together over two dozen of Gainsborough's most spectacular portraits from across North America and the United Kingdom, representing each stage of his four-decade career.
Upcoming
Ruffles & Ribbons: Fashion Plates from the Time of Marie Antoinette
April 1 to August 3, 2026
Organized in conjunction with Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture, this Cabinet installation presents twenty-four hand-colored engravings that depict French fashion in the late eighteenth century. These plates are selected from Gallerie des modes et costumes français (1778–87), the largest and most influential series of its day. No complete set of Gallerie des modes survives today. Many were discarded when fashions changed, and others could have been destroyed during the French Revolution. The Frick Art Research Library has an impressive collection of three hundred and seventy original prints, a selection of which will be on view at the Frick for the first time.
