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When The Frick Collection opened in 1935, several galleries and public spaces were added to the mansion, and a general scheme of lighting was put in place by John Russell Pope, the architect in charge of the building's conversion into a public museum. In the 1980s overhead lighting was added to the ceilings of the Boucher and Fragonard Rooms, but not until the mid-1990s was another full-scale effort to relight the works of art in the museum undertaken. Customized and updated picture lights over individually framed paintings were installed throughout most rooms of the Collection. The positive results of this project, underwritten by Irene Roosevelt Aitken, were immediate and made clear that certain galleries needed ambient lighting upgrades as well, most particularly those where illumination depends on skylights and overhead fixtures. In conjunction with a series of multifaceted refurbishments begun under Director Anne L. Poulet in 2007- projects that in many cases involved the replacement of worn wall treatments and carpeting, the refinishing of floors, and the addition of seating- the Frick began to look at further lighting solutions. The first initiative was the overall renovation of the Fragonard Room. Work included repainting the 1916 room paneling according to an artisanal technique, refinishing the floors, and replacing the windows. An award-winning relighting initiative was undertaken by Richard Renfro and Associates, who were able to cast lighting flexibly on a broader array of objects in the room than ever before while also illuminating the full vertical length of Jean-Honoré Fragonard's celebrated panels.
In 2008, in the central Living Hall- the setting for a very important group of paintings by Bellini, Titian, El Greco, and Holbein, as well as Renaissance bronzes and Boulle and Boulle-inspired furniture-was refurbished. In 2009 the marble and limestone surfaces of the Garden Court and Entrance Hall were treated for the first time since the museum opened. A new cleaning technique was used to bring back the crisp contours of this beloved public space designed in 1935 by John Russell Pope. In the fall of 2009 the East Gallery, also designed by Pope, was substantially renovated. The lighting was updated for the first time, and, with the support of Margot and Jeremiah Bogert, the walls were covered with a textile similar in...