Frick Taps New Head of Education Programs after $220M Renovation

Longtime Frick staff member Caitlin Henningsen is now steward of the Education Department, which has long been a cornerstone of the museum’s mission.

The role has taken on renewed importance after the five-year $220 million renovation of the museum that contains masterpieces by Rembrandt, Fragonard, Goya, El Greco, and Vermeera was completed in April 2025.

In her new position, as Ayesha Bulchandani Head of Education and Public Engagement, the Wesleyan and Harvard grad says, “The Frick stands out among New York City museums as an intimate collection of unparalleled masterpieces in a unique historic setting. As an educator, I often think about the quite human goal articulated in the museum’s founding language: that it should be a place for ‘all persons whomsoever.’ I am excited to step into the leadership of the Education Department in pursuit of this goal.”

Straus Media reached out to the new department head to discuss her plans to guide the iconic institution into 2027.

What are your top priorities?

Two of my goals are to learn as much as I can from our audiences about their experiences at the Frick post-reopening and to launch an afterschool program for teens that exposes them both to the collection and to the work of the museum–what’s involved with running a place like the Frick, how many hands are involved, and what it might be like for them to pursue a career in the arts. The museum can be a meaningful “third space” for young people – not home, not school – and I’m excited to work toward this with my colleagues.

How will you build upon the education programming that’s grown since the Frick’s reopening?

In the wake of our reopening, I’m often asked whether we plan to continue offering our conversation-based online programming. These are programs we created during the lockdown phase of the pandemic when folks were looking for opportunities to expand their world from home. They’ve proven enduringly popular. For some, these programs are a chance to connect with the Frick despite not living nearby, while others who identify as housebound consider them vital opportunities to engage with other art-lovers. We do plan to continue it, even as we expand the talks, panels, guided visits, and studio programs taking place in our newly constructed spaces.

In 2007, you began as a curatorial assistant. What led you to education, and what has that journey taught you?

I always loved being in the galleries interacting directly with visitors around the collection. As an educator, that’s much of my day, and it’s reinforced my belief that no prior knowledge is required to find meaning in a work of art. To paraphrase the educational philosopher Maxine Greene, all you need to look at a work of art is your lived life.

What drew you to gallery teaching specifically, and what makes it distinct from other forms of public engagement?

As a young museum employee, I was inspired by the teaching of one of the Frick’s previous Heads of Education, Rika Burnham. She created a program called Art Dialogues, one that we still teach, where participants take a long, focused look at a single artwork - up to an hour or more. It’s a form of engagement that I really love, where we build a shared interpretation of a masterpiece like Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait in a small, temporary community of art lovers. That kind of slow, sustained engagement is a habit many of us want to cultivate deliberately these days, given the fast pace of our world.

What makes the Louis Vuitton First Fridays program resonate with audiences?

Louis Vuitton First Fridays are a blast. You can choose your own adventure -- I like to toast the end of the week in the Garden Court, listening to a jazz trio, then try my hand at sketching or check out a gallery talk on a famous painting. It’s a fantastic opportunity to experience the Frick for free, especially if you’ve never visited. And for busy New Yorkers, evening museum hours are essential.

Why is supporting emerging scholars important to the Frick’s mission?

In our programs for emerging scholars – whether we’re talking about the annual graduate student symposium or an internship, study day, or library workshop – we are nurturing the future of the field. Our aim is to provide those students and early-career scholars with opportunities to train their eyes and to bring their research into the public sphere.

Your forthcoming book, “Untold Stories: Domestic Service at the Frick Mansion, 1914–1931,” delves into the lives of the household staff. What first drew you to the subject, and what do you hope readers take away?

I’ve always been interested in life behind the scenes. In a few places in the historic galleries, you can see old call-buttons that were used to summon staff. I started to wonder who would have answered those calls, and what their lives were like. Their stories are New York stories. Most were immigrants, and they came to this city looking for change, for opportunity, for advancement. I hope readers will have an even richer appreciation of the city’s history and the Frick’s place in it.

How does your historical research inform how you interpret the space for visitors today?

The past can feel quite close to us at the Frick. That’s part of the place’s magic; something of the atmosphere of an elite private home is preserved, even though we’ve been a museum for the public for more than ninety years. The period in which it was a home was actually quite short – just seventeen years – and my research satisfies many visitors’ natural curiosity about how the home was run. I love sharing what I’ve learned about the many people who lived and worked here who were not named Frick.

Looking ahead, what does success look like for the Education Department under your leadership a year from now?

Success is an education program that inspires people to look closely, listen to one another, and think big. A year from now, I hope we’ll have welcomed many new audiences through our doors. It’s our job to provide a number of ways into what we hope will be a lifelong relationship with the arts.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of the novel “The Last Single Woman In New York City.”