The Frye Art Museum opened its doors to the public for the first time on February 8, 1952 and is today celebrating six decades of serving the community with free access to it collections, exhibitions, and education programs.

The Museum’s founders, had a vision of Seattle as a vibrant, global city committed to excellence in the arts. Avid philanthropic supporters of art and music, Charles and Emma Frye gifted a collection of 232 paintings to the people of Seattle, with the promise that access to the collection would always be free.

While other leading collectors of the day were acquiring paintings by French impressionists popular in the early 20th century, the Fryes supported artists of the Munich Secession whose experiments with the intersection of art, literature, music, dance, design, science, and social practice were described by the New York Times in January 1909 as “impulsive, energetic, and extremely various,” demonstrating how far “individualism may be carried.” The core values of the Secessionists, inherent in the Frye Art Museum’s Founding Collection guide the Museum’s commitment to artistic inquiry and its engagement with both historical and contemporary art.

To begin its 60th anniversary year, the Museum is presenting three exhibitions, all conceived, researched, and curated in-house. Together, these three exhibitions and associated programming express the Museum’s ongoing commitment to a global prospective and to breaking boundaries between disciplines.

Susie J. Lee: Of Breath and Rain, February 18–April 18, 2012, is the first solo museum exhibition by exceptional Seattle artist Susie J. Lee. A Stranger Genius Award-winner, Lee is described as a “new-media sensualist” whose work filters, quiets, and distills technological noise to create intensely intimate spaces which are imperfect mirrors between fact and fiction. Of Breath and Rain comprises two of Lee’s signature works, Rain Shower, 2007, and Still Lives: Exposure, 2010, both of which explore the extraordinary richness of human existence through a range of media. Curated by Robin Held, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Collections.

Li Chen: Eternity and Commoner, February 18 through April 8, 2012, is the first U.S. museum exhibition of Li Chen, a leading sculptor working in Shanghai and Taiwan, who is known internationally for his monumental figurative sculptures informed by a mixture of Buddhist philosophy and contemporary art practice. The exhibition premieres a new series of works by the artist titled The Constitution of Immortality which explores our shared desire for eternity and perfection. These works are spare and restrained, employing simple wood, rope, and clay to convey an elemental physicality. Also included in exhibition is the installation Eternity consisting of a towering, twelve twelve-foot-tall high wooden figure surrounded by small “gods,” or escorts in a room-sized bed of clay dust, and powerful clay and rope figures from the series Soul Guardians (2008-9) in which Li Chen reflected on natural and man-made disasters, the relentless consumption of the earth’s resources, and the retaliation of nature. Curated by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Director.

Beloved: Pictures at an Exhibition, on view now through April 15, 2012, presents a selection of paintings from the Frye Art Museum’s Founding Collection. The works on view have been chosen by Frieda Sondland, a ninety-year-old resident of Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood, who has visited the Museum nearly every day for the past ten years. Sondland has selected these pictures, to which she has strong emotional ties, as an homage to her family and to Charles and Emma Frye, the founding patrons of the Museum. Co-curated by Frieda Sondland and Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Director.

Sixtieth anniversary exhibitions, special events, and programs will continue throughout the 2012-13 season. Announcements of these plans will be made at a press conference in March.

Looking ahead to the next 60 years, the Board of Trustees and staff of the Frye Art Museum is committed to astute partnering at the local and global levels. Strategic allocation of resources and formation of a department dedicated to development, membership, and community relations are some of the many initiatives Museum staff is undertaking to secure the Museum’s place in the 21st century.

The Frye Art Museum is determined to be of value to its community, and to be valued by the community, as it builds support to remain Seattle’s only free art museum.