The name of the woman who got the tricky commission actually was the most convincing argument to allay the concerns. After all, around the year 2000, she had already refurbished another pseudo-French urban art palace. Also located on Fifth Avenue and dating from the same era, it had been designed by the same architectural firm of Carrère and Hastings, specialists in the Beaux Art style. This was to become the Neue Galerie, Ronald Lauder's museum for classic modern art from Austria and Germany. Nearly impossible to find anyone today who does not love the building, not least because of the very Viennese “Café Sabarsky” Selldorf accommodated on the first floor.

The Lauder project’s success cemented Selldorf’s reputation, who had already been in demand for some time on the Big Apple’s art scene. The Cologne native had built out Manhattan gallery spaces for her compatriot Michael Werner, for example, after which his colleagues lined up for her services. David Zwirner, Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Barbara Gladstone, Acquavella: Step into any major New York gallery today and you will be in a space conceived by Selldorf. This alone is a remarkable professional achievement for someone who moved to New York 1979 mainly because she had been unable to find a university course of studies via Germany’s academic placement agency. After graduating from the Pratt Institute, she served as assistant to Richard Gluckman, who in the 1980s enjoyed exactly the same cachet she does now: As the go-to specialist for art spaces.  (At the time, he had just expanded the Breuer Building for the Whitney Museum.)

So what make’s Selldorf’s spaces distinctive? That they precisely do not display the signature style cultivated by star architects. Her minimalism is intended to place lighting and harmonious proportions entirely at the service of the artworks. This restrained approach is a rather unusual way to attain prominence, especially in America. However, as Selldorf’s work at the Frick neared completion, she was profiled in Vogue Magazine, with photos by none other than Annie Leibovitz, who visited Selldorf at her vacation retreat on the Maine Coast. And it was there that we, too, caught up with her to discuss the triumph that the Frick’s reopening this spring became. Even before the end result was apparent, all criticism had ceased. Only occasionally would someone look for something to complain about, which would end up being that it had turned out “too beautiful,” Selldorf relates with some amusement. Like the marble spiral staircase she had installed, for example. But that’s something she definitely can live with.

What made all the difference is that the upper floor finally has been fitted out for the public. And that there is more room to show more of the museum’s collection. That elegant spaces finally are available to house the special exhibits that previously had been crowded into the basement. And the fact that the dated electrical system has been replaced and the staff finally has more space. And especially: that a commodious foyer and ticket area now replace the very confined annex structure that wheelchair users had had such trouble accessing. Here once again, Selldorf has put much of her effort into the gallery’s lighting, to create an effect she describes as: “take off your glasses, clean them, and put them back on.”

Many bemoaned the loss of the chamber music room, despite its notoriously bad acoustics. Which makes the newly installed auditorium, whose excellent acoustics are already the talk of the town, all the more popular. Its white, semicircular shape is often compared to the inside of a shell. Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times, originally a skeptic but now a convert, even called the space “mildly erotic.” “That’s really my favorite child, insofar as one is allowed to have one,” Selldorf reveals. She wanted to create a room that embraces the visitor. That it also sounds so good is a vindication of her architectural concept. 

“I don’t play word games, Wordle, or crossword puzzles,” she tells us. Which is why she is all the fonder of precisely this sort of task, “the challenge of solving a problem strategically with the language of my craft.”

When she was awarded the contract for remodeling the foyer of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing in London – whilst still working on the Frick – this could be regarded as just such a challenge, albeit of unprecedented complexity. Not least because of the chauvinism exhibited by some British media (Selldorf represented the sole foreign design firm in the competition, and the only one headed by a woman). Another complication had to be overcome in Denise Scott Brown: Having originally designed the Sainsbury Wing some thirty years ago in an ironic, Post-Modern style along with her husband Robert Venturi, she tried to block any alterations, even though Selldorf had come to consult her in person in Philadelphia. Her opposition initially led to vitriolic media coverage the likes of which Selldorf had never before endured in her career. 

She did receive posthumous support, however, from the building’s naming sponsor. When two columns serving merely decorative purposes were removed, one of them was found to contain a letter from British supermarket magnate John Sainsbury: “If you have found this note you must be engaged in demolishing one of the false columns...  Let it be known that one of the donors of this building is absolutely delighted that your generation has decided to dispense with the unnecessary columns.” This said, the Sainsbury Wing is and always will be the work of Venturi and Scott Brown, Selldorf emphasizes. But the way she decluttered the foyer, making it brighter, easier to survey and more visitor-friendly, increasingly is garnering plaudits even in conservative British circles. So it only makes sense that Selldorf promptly was given the task of alleviating the Wallace Collection’s space limitations – the building in the midst of Manchester Square, stuffed with Old Masters, weapons, and armor, that once served as the model for New York’s Frick Collection. With the difference that the London original offers far less room for maneuver or workarounds. Annabelle Selldorf sounds delighted as she describes the huge difficulties involved. It is highly probable that she will find great joy in solving them – as visitors will when they see the result!