Frick Collection Will Revise Renovation to Preserve Garden

Preservationists can rest easy on at least one score: The Frick Collection will be keeping its gated garden.

Other than that, details are still to come as to how a new plan to renovate the Frick’s Gilded Age mansion will differ from the one it was forced to scrap last year after intense controversy.

But the museum has made progress on an alternative, announcing on Thursday the next phase of planning, which essentially amounts to having architects submit their credentials.

“We’re looking at existing subterranean spaces and nonpublic spaces that could be utilized,” said Ian Wardropper, the museum’s director, in an interview. “We’re at the point now where we want a fresh approach.”

The field has been narrowed to 20 architects, Mr. Wardropper said, and the Frick hopes to have a selection by the end of the year, with initial designs by 2017.

While the Frick abandoned its earlier renovation plan, designed by Davis Brody Bond — which called for a six-story addition that eliminated the gated garden on East 70th Street — its space constraints have remained the same, if not “become more pressing,” Mr. Wardropper said, as evidenced by its current popular van Dyck exhibition.

“We need more facilities in order to mount a major show like that, without taking down the permanent collection to do it,” Mr. Wardropper said. “We’re essentially a house that’s been retrofitted as a museum and the flow of our visitors is something that’s always been a problem.”