{"id":59383,"date":"2025-08-05T05:07:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T05:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/59383\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T05:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T05:07:09","slug":"can-steve-martin-help-bring-visitors-to-the-frick-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/59383\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Steve Martin Help Bring Visitors to the Frick Collection?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

As if a $220 million makeover weren\u2019t enough, the Frick Collection in New York City has enlisted comedian Steve Martin to promote the newly reopened museum, which returned to its Fifth Avenue headquarters this spring. <\/p>\n

In a new video<\/a> posted to the Frick\u2019s website and social media, the Only Murders in the Building co-creator and actor prances around the freshly renovated Gilded Age mansion, narrating a short history of the museum and its originator, the industrialist and notorious labor suppressor<\/a> Henry Clay Frick.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsider what you or I might be drawn to on any given day at the Frick Collection,\u201d Martin begins in the six-minute video. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s a gilded beard,\u201d he suggests, as the camera pans to capture the lush facial hair of a 15th-century Hercules sculpture. <\/p>\n

During its five-year renovation, the museum temporarily relocated its collection of Old Master paintings and decorative arts to the Brutalist Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue, the former home of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Following its reopening in April in its original home, 231,972 people have visited the updated Frick Collection, according to a museum spokesperson.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what the Frick Collection is for: for slowing down, following your eye, and getting closer to objects of beauty and awe that are always right here, waiting for us behind these historic doors,\u201d Martin says in drawn-out, inflected sentences. (The category of \u201cus,\u201d of course, is restricted to those who can drop $30 on a museum visit.)<\/p>\n

A Frick spokesperson told Hyperallergic that Martin was a good fit because he is \u201ca longtime member and fan\u201d of the museum as well as \u201can iconic figure in New York City.\u201d It\u2019s also worth mentioning that the actor is a seasoned art collector. Martin once described<\/a> collecting as his \u201cbiggest hobby,\u201d in part because paintings are so different from his chosen vocation. His private collection reportedly<\/a> includes works by Picasso, Francis Bacon, and Roy Lichtenstein, and he also authored a 2010 novel<\/a> set in the contemporary art world.<\/p>\n

Martin may or may not be the most fitting choice for the face of the Frick, but his experience solving museum heists as the clumsy Inspector Jacques Clouseau in The Pink Panther (2006) certainly lends some ironic charm to his latest starring role. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As if a $220 million makeover weren\u2019t enough, the Frick Collection in New York City has enlisted comedian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,44559,24510],"class_list":{"0":"post-59383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-frick-collection","14":"tag-steve-martin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}