The Frye Art Museum is undertaking the important task of rewriting its Collections Management Plan (CMP). A CMP is a statement of the Museum’s professional standards and practices according to the American Association of Museums’ guidelines regarding proper management of its Permanent Collections. The Frye’s CMP work is divided into three stages, culminating with board approval and implementation of the new plan. Here we address the research phase, in which we are gathering new information about the Frye’s collections from a number of respected sources, and rethinking these collections to enhance their relevance and dynamism in the twenty-first century.

CMP research started in summer 2006, when Frye Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections Robin Held took a research trip to Munich, a city in which the Frye is well known for its Founding Collection of nineteenth-century German paintings. As an official guest of Germany’s Federal Foreign Office and assigned a cultural attaché, Held had extraordinary access to colleagues and collections and ably satisfied her goals to investigate the “roots and branches” of the Frye Founding Collection and to renew and/or establish new contacts for the Frye. Highlights of Held’s introduction to the museum collections and culture of Munich included Lenbachhaus, the Neue Pinakothek, and Museum Villa Stuck. Held returns to Munich this summer along with Executive Director Midge Bowman, where together they will deepen connections with sister institutions and colleagues.

In early 2007, a group of scholars specializing in German and American art visited the Frye to help Held and Curator of Collections Donna Kovalenko analyze the Founding Collection’s strengths, forge conceptual connections to the Permanent Collection, reclassify the collections, and make recommendations for future collecting directions. These esteemed art historians included Dr. Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, former director, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich; Dr. Joachim Kaak, chief curator, Neue Pinakothek, Munich; Dr. Patti Junker, curator of American art, Seattle Art Museum; and Richard West, Frye director emeritus.

During this period, the Frye also hosted a University of Washington interdisciplinary seminar for students in art history, the comparative history of ideas, museology, and fine arts. Taught by Held and art historian Kolya Rice, this course provided students the opportunity to use the Frye collections as a test case for exhibition strategies, collection categorization, teaching techniques, and other topics pertinent to a museum in the new century.

These combined research efforts provide important information for the CMP and inspiration for the next phase of the Frye’s growth.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2007 edition of FRYE magazine.