The Frick is delighted to announce that Apollo magazine has named the museums recent presentation of the work of Luigi Valadier the exhibition of the year. Luigi Valadier: Splendor in Eighteenth-Century Rome, which closed in January 2019, was the first exhibition in the U.S. devoted to showcasing this incredibly influential Italian decorative artist. With an extraordinary eye for detail, Valadier designed and crafted whimsical, avant-garde, and elegant pieces for patrons across Europe. The acclaimed exhibition was accompanied by the first substantial monograph published on the artist. The Valadier show and book resulted from a deeply rewarding project overseen internally by our Peter Jay Sharp chief curator Xavier F. Salomon. Over a period of five years, he worked closely with the shows curator, Alvar Gonzlez-Palacios, who has dedicated most of his life to scholarship on the artist and is considered its foremost expert. The wonder of it was palpable in our galleries, as never before had an American museum audience been able to view together so many examples of Valadiers production, with significant loans coming from public institutions as well as private collections in Europe and the United States. The initiative followed in the footsteps of our 2016 exhibition on Pierre Gouthire (which was also nominated by Apollo as one of the top shows worldwide in 2016). To Xavier, Alvar, our lenders and those who generously supported the show, we offer our gratitude, stated Ian Wardropper, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen director of the Frick Collection. Inspired by the New York showing, an exhibition about Valadier is on view in Rome through Feb. 2, 2020, at the Galleria Borghese. To learn more, visit www.frick.org.