Frye loosens up its arts mission

For years, Frye Art Museum administrators have said they were constrained by a mission to show only representational art. Now museum director Midge Bowman says that limitation was simply an "urban legend."

The Frye has announced a liberating mission statement that will allow the curatorial staff to show pretty much what it wants, as long as it engages with the Frye's founding collection, permanently on view.

The statement reads: "The Frye Art Museum is dedicated to artistic inquiry, a rich visitor experience, and civic responsibility. A primary catalyst for our engagement with contemporary art and artists is the Founding Collection of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century art by Munich-based artists. Admission to the Museum will always be free."

The shift, Bowman says, "more truly reflects both the intention of the Fryes as well as the vision the current staff and board have for the museum."

Apparently, the First Hill museum's historic dislike for abstract art traces to Walser Greathouse, executor of founders Charles and Emma Frye's estate, and director of the museum from its opening in 1952 until his death in 1966. His wife, Ida Kay Greathouse, then assumed leadership and ruled the museum with an iron fist until 1993, when she retired at the age of 87.

The term "representational" was only inserted in the Frye's mission statement in the 1990s, by Frye director Richard West, Bowman says.

So why was it taken for so long as the word of God?

"It was in the strategic plan, and when we got here, both Robin [Held, chief curator] and I didn't want to throw the baby out with the bath. To consider changing, we had to delve into what the current practice had been," says Bowman, who wants to make changes gradually and strategically, based on research into the museum's history. "It would have been cheeky to go to Richard and say, 'Why did you do what you did?' "

Since Held was hired as curator in 2004, the Frye has made no secret about wanting to break away from its old-fashioned, sometimes stodgy image, including the "representational" part. Held has booked shows that are all over the map, including the racy retrospective of comic artist R. Crumb now on view, as well as earlier shows by outsider artist Henry Darger, Seattle painters David Kane and Joseph Park, selections from the edgy Ben and Aileen Krohn collection, and the contemporary paintings of the "New Leipzig" school. She has brought in installation and video art, sometimes with assertive sexual content that's no doubt shocked some of the more conservative regulars.

All along, Held has challenged the Frye's previous mission by showing less traditional artworks, but generally within the looser boundaries of "representational." That's a slippery slope, though. Once you head down it, you realize that most everything in art represents something, even if it's an idea, an emotion or some other intangible.

Held's eagerness to mix it up has ignited the interest of a younger crowd that the Frye desperately needs. Some of Held's most inspired work has been the way she has reinvented the middle galleries with their previously static displays of 19th- and 20th-century paintings from the permanent collection, keeping them fresh and lively.

"This is not a great founding collection, but it's unique," Bowman said. "You have like a fly in amber a picture of collecting in the early 20th century." The board now plans to continue collecting German art that furthers the Founding collection, making the Frye a place for scholarship, and at the same time continue to bring in shows of contemporary art that will attract a broader audience.

That in mind, museum leaders have begun deaccessioning and are considering further future cuts. Bowman says the Frye already donated a collection of some 50 watercolors by Frederic Whitaker and Eileen Monaghan Whitaker back to their foundation. Also under scrutiny is a collection of Alaska material that Bowman says she would like to place with the University of Alaska. "We aren't doing anything about this in a hurry."

The museum holds some $26 million in real estate assets that bring in $3.5 million annually as well as a $15 million endowment. It recently borrowed $1.3 million to buy property across the street from the museum, but Bowman says there are no immediate plans to build there.

Sheila Farr: sfarr@seattletimes.com