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New York (March 4, 2025) — In the first exhibition to be held in The Frick Collection’s new special exhibition galleries, three works by Johannes Vermeer will be presented from June 18 through September 8, 2025. The unprecedented installation Vermeer’s Love Letters centers on the Frick’s iconic Mistress and Maid, uniting it with two special loans: The Love Letter from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and Woman Writing a Letter, with Her Maid from the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Presented together in a single gallery for the first time, this trio of works will offer visitors the opportunity to consider Vermeer’s exploration of themes of letter writing and epistolary exchange in the context of the seventeenth-century domestic settings for which the artist is renowned.
States Xavier F. Salomon, the Frick’s Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, “On the heels of the museum’s public reopening on April 17, it is fitting that we are debuting our new special exhibition galleries with a closer look at the work of Vermeer, one of the most popular artists in our collection. His Mistress and Maid is the final masterpiece that Henry Clay Frick acquired before his death, making this inaugural show a particularly appropriate tribute to his legacy as a collector.”
In taking up the motif of the exchange of letters, Vermeer and his contemporaries explored and imagined the inner lives and emotions of their painted subjects, often creating enigmatic narrative scenes. Of about three dozen surviving works by Vermeer, six are variations on this theme. The three works united in the exhibition share a particular focus on women in the domestic sphere: ladies and their maidservants. The complex relationships, tensions, and trust between these two social classes—domestic servants and their employers—is a topic linked to and exemplified by the writing, reading, and delivery of letters. The exhibition’s curator, Dr. Robert Fucci, distinguished scholar on seventeenth-century Dutch art from the University of Amsterdam, examines these ideas in the literary and artistic contexts of Vermeer’s time. The display of the three works brought together in Vermeer’s Love Letters captures the artist’s ability to portray themes of everyday life with nuance, variety, and drama.
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