Middle Ground Blog

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.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
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