Naked George arrived in New York on schedule. The Italian woman who played a big role in arranging for Naked George to look stately and noble on this side of the Atlantic — specifically, in the Frick Collection, on Fifth Avenue — did not.

Naked George — though that is not its official name — is a 200-year-old plaster statue of the first president in the buff. The woman is Franca Coin, the president of a small museum in Italy that owns the statue. Xavier F. Salomon, the Frick’s chief curator, declared flatly: “This never would have happened without her.”