Edited by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker

Charles Frye, a philanthropist and art collector, had a visionary plan for an art museum in Seattle’s Volunteer Park that would bring together the finest art collections in the city under one roof.

Charles and Emma Frye developed their passion for art at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. By 1909, they began building a noteworthy collection of German art to be shown one day in a civic museum. The couple continued to acquire paintings until the 1930s, including works by the more experimental artists associated with the Munich Secession, who were distinguished by their insistence on excellence, extreme individualism, and stylistic diversity.

The paintings collected by the Fryes were subsequently gifted to the people of Seattle and are now in the collections of the Frye Art Museum. Many of them are reproduced in Beloved: Pictures at an Exhibition, a 112-page fully illustrated book published by the Frye Art Museum in celebration of the Museum’s 60th Anniversary. The story of Charles Frye’s early efforts to found a Seattle art museum are also recounted in Beloved, which contains new scholarship in two essays by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Director of the Frye Art Museum.

Beloved: Pictures at an Exhibition also catalogues a popular exhibition of the same name, which was presented at the Frye Art Museum February 4, to April 15, 2012. The exhibition was co-curated by Frieda Sondland, a ninety-one year old resident of Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood, who has visited the Frye Art Museum nearly every day for more than a decade. Mrs. Sondland, a citizen-curator who earned celebrity for her participation in the exhibition at the Frye, is profiled in the pages of Beloved. The book also includes her gallery labels for many of the artworks that were included in the exhibition.

In commemoration of the Frye Art Museum’s 60th Anniversary, Beloved: Pictures at an Exhibition contains the first-ever comprehensive record of exhibitions at the Museum, 1952-2012.

Beloved: Pictures at an Exhibition is edited by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker and published by the Frye Art Museum with the support of the Gordon D. Sondland and Katherine J. Durant Foundation. The book is available for $25 per copy.

This is
an art object, an artist’s book, a catalogue, a limited edition,
a shattering of boundaries, an embodiment,
practice that
captures
a /the
dichotomy of the material and the ephemeral.

--Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, foreword

Published by the Frye Art Museum on the occasion of the exhibition Susie J. Lee: Of Breath and Rain, this multimedia artist book aptly showcases the time-based nature of Susie J. Lee’s artwork. The book includes an introduction by exhibition curator Robin Held, a scholarly essay by art historian Kolya Rice, a literary work by Rebecca Brown, and a foreword by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker. Paired with the book, content on a flash drive—an audio experience, an artist interview with Robin Held, and the Still Lives portrait from the Frye’s exhibition—provides the reader a unique interactive experience.

A $7 shipping fee applies to all mail orders of this catalogue.

Edited by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker

In a few short years, Isaac Layman (b. 1977) has established himself as an exceptional talent. In Paradise, Layman expands his practice of constructing large-scale, psychologically charged photographic-based visions of the spaces and objects found in his Seattle home. His most recent photographic constructions explore the desire to fabricate escapes, destinations, and monuments and the role discontent plays in driving the need to create imagined perfection.

Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker surveys Layman’s work in the context of dreams of utopia in suburbia, secession from the city, nostalgia for paradise, and the work of fellow artists including the late Gordon Matta-Clark. The book also includes an essay by the exceptional poet and author Doug Nufer.

Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker is director of the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, and a curator of contemporary and historical art who has published extensively in Europe, Asia, and North America. Doug Nufer is a Seattle writer, poet, and performer and an editor of American Book Review.

Details: 80 pp., 37 color illus., 11.75 x 11.75 in. $28.00 HC. ISBN 978-0-295-99185-6

128 pages, 11 ¼ x 10 ¼ inches, 72 color and 23 black-and-white illustrations, 2011
Hardcover
$30.00

In conjunction with its exhibition Gabriel von Max: Be-tailed Cousins and Phantasms of the Soul, the Frye Art Museum has published a 128-page, fully illustrated monograph on the artist—the first to appear in English. Included are essays by the curator of the exhibition, Frye Director Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, and leading European art historians Karin Althaus, Susanne Böller, Aleš Filip, Helmut Hess, and Roman Musil. Also included is a fictitious account by Gabriel von Max of an adventurous journey he reputedly made to the United States.