The free Frye: One of my favorite things in town.
I could sing the praises of The Frye Art Museum until the end of time. After all, who can argue with the power of free – especially when you’re talking about a wonderful collection of art and the outstanding rotating exhibitions (see “The Old, Weird America: Folk Themes in Contemporary Art”) that come through the place?
Last weekend I went over to the museum to peruse the smallest exhibit in the museum (because that’s exactly what you can do when price is not a barrier), “Soft Glowing Light: Viewing Art in the Home of Charles and Emma Frye.” I wanted to learn more about the Seattle power couple who started it all, to understand the genesis of their legacy and a bit more about one of my favorite places in Seattle. What I found out surprised me, although in retrospect it shouldn’t have. The Fryes were incredibly prolific in their art collecting, but they were also undeniably generous with their purchases, opening up their personal home gallery to charity functions and special groups with great frequency, long before they were able to establish a free museum for the entirety of the public. Their house gallery, along with the Henry’s across town, were major cultural outposts in Seattle, bringing art to a much broader audience.
The exhibit itself is quite small – I counted 21 photos and a reproduction of a 1917 Society Page from “The Seattle Sunday Times” – but the passion of the Frye’s is undeniably in every photo, art covers every possible inch of the walls in the Frye home gallery – floor to ceiling, wall to wall.
According to the literature describing the exhibit, the Fryes hung and rehung paintings constantly in order to surface new connections between their paintings; one day might show paintings from given artists grouped together and the next day might show them instead grouped by subject matter or style. Like Rob, the main character from “High Fidelity
