As the Frye’s chief curator and director of its exhibitions and collections, I think a lot about what it means to honor and extend the legacy of Charles and Emma Frye. This means going beyond consideration of the question, “What would the Fryes do?” as early-twentieth-century private collectors with a public vision for their art. It means imagining how we as the professional staff of the Charles and Emma Frye Free Public Art Museum, working in the twenty-first century, can harness and maximize the potential of the gift the Fryes have left in our care and make a meaningful contribution on an international playing field.

We have Charles Frye’s will to guide us. Good stewardship of the Fryes’ art is paramount: high standards of care, conservation, scholarship, and exhibition are critical to our efforts. We are also guided by the Fryes’ collecting practice. From the earliest days of their interest in building a collection of historical and contemporary art, Charles and Emma sought the counsel of artists, and often purchased directly from artists in their studios. The Fryes’ collection therefore remains a catalyst for our current work with contemporary art and artists.

Creating Heaven

Essential to this effort is the Frye’s recent commissions of new art by contemporary artists. This art is created in response to each artist’s research in and response to the Founding Collection. By invitation artists visit the Frye for an extended residency, delve into the Founding Collection, select art from it for exhibition, create their own art in response to it, or both. This maintains the Collection as a vital focus of artistic as well as scholarly inquiry, alive to new forms of critique and engagement and diverse perspectives.

Juxtaposing selections for the Founding Collection with new sculptural works by San Antonio artist Dario Robleto, the exhibition Heaven is Being a Memory to Others is our most recent opportunity to experience the Founding Collection through a contemporary artist’s eyes. In this exhibition, Robleto explores the human yearning for immortality, and imagines the Collection through the eyes of its cofounder, Emma Lamp Frye. The occasion of this exhibition also marks the first time all galleries of the Museum will be turned over to the art and vision of a single artist. Heaven is on view concurrently with Dario Robleto: Alloy of Love, a ten-year traveling survey of the artist’s work in all mediums.

Producing Task

We are also guided by Charles Frye’s determination that the Frye Art Museum exist as a free public art museum. From its public opening in 1952, the Frye has always offered free admission. However, being “free” means more than the lack of admission fee. It carries with it a civic responsibility we inherit from the Fryes to make art accessible to as many people as possible. I think it is safe to assume that neither Charles nor Emma could have imagined the success of the museum that bears their name, welcoming through its doors 100,000 visitors annually.

There are major art forms that do not fit well within the confines of museum galleries. Such art—public and performative in nature—is far better suited for dynamic civic spaces in the city. The Frye, in collaboration with our partners the Seattle Public Library, On the Boards, and Tacoma Art Museum, has commissioned Oliver Herring’s performance Task, an improvisational event that brings together strangers to create an original site-specific artwork. Task is presented in the vast public spaces of the award-winning, Rem Koolhaus-designed Seattle Public Library. The performance is free to the public and will take place during the library’s normal operating hours.

Task is exemplary of the ways the Frye Art Museum honors and extends the legacy of its founders. It reflects and expands upon the Fryes’ involvement with living artists and their desire to make art accessible to the widest audience possible. It also marks a significant partnership among several key arts organizations in the region, all committed to introducing this important art to a broader cross-section of Northwest viewers. In 2005 the Frye was honored with a Stranger Genius Award for the “most inexplicable museum transformation,” support from which provides funding for Task. I like to think that Charles and Emma Frye would be very proud of this recognition.

Robin Held
Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2008 edition of FRYE magazine.