The Frick Collection has received a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to hire its first curator of decorative arts, the director of the museum, Anne Poulet, said. Over half the museum’s collection consists of works of decorative art — from French furniture to Chinese porcelain, to a collection of 45 antique clocks, made over a period between the 16th and the 19th centuries.

The NEH grant is $750,000, to be matched by $3 million, which the museum hopes to raise within a year, primarily from other foundations and board members. It has already received another $750,000 from the Iris Foundation, Ms. Poulet said.

The decorative arts curator will conduct and facilitate research on the collection and propose acquisitions, either to be purchased by the museum directly or given by a donor. Unlike Isabella Stewart Gardner, who stipulated in her will that the permanent collection in her museum, in Fenway Court, Boston, not be significantly altered, Henry Clay Frick in his will allowed for future additions to the collection, provided they be of the same quality as the works he acquired.

Given the high standard of the works Frick collected, it is “very difficult for [us] to acquire paintings,” unless by gift, Ms. Poulet said. The Frick has no designated fund for acquisitions. Until around 1970, the income from the endowment Frick left paid for all operating expenses, as well as capital improvements and acquisitions. Since 1970, the operating costs have consumed all of the income, so the museum has made major acquisitions only through gifts or specific fund raising efforts, Ms. Poulet said. But in the fields of sculpture and decorative arts, which are comparatively more affordable, “I feel we can buy great masterpieces,” she said.

Frick acquired much of his decorative arts collection — most of his Chinese porcelains, Renaissance bronzes, and Limoges enamels, and select pieces of French 18th-century furniture — out of the collection of J.P. Morgan. After Morgan died in 1913, objects from his collection went on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for two years, Ms. Poulet said. With the encouragement of his art adviser, Joseph Duveen, Frick “went to the Met and went shopping,” Ms. Poulet said. In addition to decorative art objects, Frick also bought the museum’s six Fragonard panels from that exhibition.

Among the Frick collection’s more famous pieces of furniture are a commode and fall-front desk made for Marie-Antoinette at Versailles, and a gray marble table with mounts (gilt-bronze sculptural elements) by the premier French metal worker, Pierre Gouthière. The museum also has important pieces by the French furniture designer André-Charles Boulle.

The decorative art objects are published in the museum’s systematic catalog, but much of that research is out-of-date, Ms. Poulet said. In the fields of porcelain and enamels, in particular, there have been major technical advances, which provide noninvasive means of analyzing materials to help determine an object’s age and place of origin. A group of outside scholars recently discovered, for instance, that some of Frick’s Chinese vases, which he believed to be from the 18th century, were actually 19th-century imitations.

In an interview, the chairman of the NEH, Bruce Cole, described himself as proud that the NEH can help the Frick “display and interpret this very distinguished part of their collection.” Ms. Poulet said it is critical the Frick have top-notch curators who can continuously interpret and reinterpret the museum’s collection. “You don’t want to just be in mothballs,” she said. “You want to be someplace that is stimulating and exciting, where [the visitor] can learn something new every time.”