As of today, there’s ten authenticated Johannes Vermeer paintings on public view in New York, the most of anywhere outside of the Netherlands. All of them are on the Upper East Side, within walking distance. You could have a Dutch Golden Age day, if you wanted.
Five Vermeer paintings are on display at The Frick Collection as part of the exhibition Vermeer’s Love Letters, which opened June 18 and runs through September 8. The Frick reopened in April following a five-year, $220 million renovation. Its permanent Vermeer holdings—Mistress and Maid, Officer and Laughing Girl, and Girl Interrupted at Her Music—are joined by two loan works: The Love Letter (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and Woman Writing a Letter With Her Maid (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin).
Eleven blocks north, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has five more Vermeer paintings on view: A Maid Asleep, Allegory of the Catholic Faith, Study of a Young Woman, Young Woman with a Lute, and Young Woman with a Water Pitcher. These five span early to late career and are presented in a single gallery.
Vermeer, the 17th-century Dutch artist, produced only 35 to 37 known works. His paintings are known for great depiction of natural light, domestic interiors, and quiet psychological tension. His subjects are frequently women, often shown reading or writing, playing music, or in private reverie.
The Frick’s exhibition focuses specifically on letter-writing as theme. According to guest curator Robert Fucci, a scholar of Dutch art at the University of Amsterdam, six of Vermeer’s paintings depict this motif. Three of them are in the exhibition. In each, there is a dynamic between a central woman and a servant figure. The curators highlight how the maid character shifts the narrative structure of the works and introduces themes of class, secrecy, and power.
The Met’s Vermeer collection emphasizes solitary female figures and symbolic interiors. Allegory of the Catholic Faith, a late and theatrical painting, contrasts sharply with the psychological minimalism of A Maid Asleep.
In addition to the ten paintings on view, an eleventh Vermeer, Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, is part of the private Leiden Collection, headquartered in New York. It is not currently on public display.
The last time a comparable number of Vermeers were gathered was at the Rijksmuseum’s 2023 retrospective in Amsterdam, which exhibited 28 works and drew 650,000 visitors.
Following the conclusion of Vermeer’s Love Letters in September, the number of Vermeers on public view in Manhattan will drop back to eight.
Ten Vermeer paintings are currently on public view in Manhattan: five at The Frick Collection (1 East 70th Street), on display through September 8, 2025, as part of the exhibition Vermeer’s Love Letters, and five more at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue), part of the permanent collection with no scheduled end date. An eleventh Vermeer, Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, belongs to the private Leiden Collection, headquartered in New York, but is not currently on public display.
