In January 2009 the Frye presents the exhibition The Munich Secession and America, curated by independent curator and Frye Foundation Scholar, Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker. This ambitious exhibition, a joint project of the Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, and the Frye, is the first Munich Secession exhibition in the United States since 1909 (at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), and presents all new scholarship.

As Frye members know well, the core of the Founding Collection comprises two generations of Munich-based art, the Kunstlergenossenschaft (the “father generation“) and the Munich Secession, art that was contemporary during the development of the Fryes’ private collection. A fuller understanding of the Munich Secession will challenge your ideas of historical secessionist art movements. Young Munich-based artists banded together with diverse values and a wide variety of formal styles.

While the variety of art displayed by the Secessionists made the group appear to be inclusive, even democratic, it was in many ways very exclusive in its pursuit of the highest quality art. Central to the conceptual framework shared by the group was the recognition that new ideas and artistic excellence are vital to culture. It was a struggle for excellence in an atmosphere of plurality, whereby sophisticated discussions were held by the artists on issues of difference. The Munich Secession was international, not only in the sense that participants were committed to the very best of the art being created by the international artists assembled in this cosmopolitan arts center, but they also pledged to an international stance for its high culture, of which great art was a crucial component.

The Frye is committing all Museum galleries to this important exhibition, emphasizing the importance of its Founding Collection. The Frye is the only United States venue for The Munich Secession and America. This marks the first time the Museum will provide a broad historical context for its Founding Collection with significant loans from Europe. It is the Museum’s public bid for a place among its international network of sister institutions in Germany (such as the Museum Villa Stuck, the Lenbachhaus, and the Neue Pinakothek) and in the United States (for example, the Busch-Reisinger Museum and the Milwaukee Art Museum). It is an important first step in beginning to demonstrate to scholars, patrons, and collectors that the Frye is deserving of important gifts of art of this period.

I hope you will be as thrilled as I am to see the Frye Founding Collection in this new light. It is with exhibitions like this that I feel we are best honoring and extending the legacies of our founders, bringing new scholarship, fuller understanding, and broader appreciation of the collection of Charles and Emma Frye.

Robin Held
Chief Curator and Director of Collections and Exhibitions

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2009 edition of FRYE magazine.

Image: Franz von Stuck. Poster for the First International Art Exhibition of the Verein Bildender Künstler (Munich Secession), 1893. 64.5 x 38 cm. Color lithograph. © Museum Villa Stuck, Munich.