The Walser Greathouse Legacy

Walser Greathouse, the Frye Art Museum’s first executive director, both honored and expanded Charles and Emma Frye’s vision, yet his contributions to the history of the Frye are under-recognized. Greathouse was a key player in the opening of the Frye Art Museum in 1952, determining its mission, scope, collecting practices, and exhibition conventions, as well as balancing the demands of Charles Frye’s will with best museum practices.

He expanded the Frye Collection with acquisitions of Munich-trained painters, as well as important late nineteenth-century American artists. He created a showcase for the Fryes’ German and Austrian paintings in a post-World War II atmosphere especially unreceptive to art from these nations. It was also during Greathouse’s tenure that the notion of representational art entered the vocabulary of the Frye Art Museum, reflecting his aesthetic and political tastes. The Walser Greathouse Legacy honors Greathouse’s significance to the development of the Frye Art Museum during the modern period.