Frye Art Museum

Through September 29

End of Day: American Oil Painting Around 1900

End of Day presents a selection of portrait and landscape paintings by American artists from the Frye Art Museum’s permanent collection. Spanning the period between the Civil War and First World War, the images oscillate between an embrace of progress and a sense of nostalgia for what was perceived to be a simpler American era.

Through December 8

Recent Acquisitions: Toyin Ojih Odutola

Toyin Ojih Odutola’s drawings, paintings, and prints question physical and sociopolitical identities as they pertain to skin color. This suite of three lithographs, recently acquired for the Frye Art Museum’s collection, demonstrates Odutola’s signature approach to portraiture, in which the sitter is seen obliquely or from multiple, unusual angles within one composition.

Through December 8

Frame of Mind: Storytelling Through Animation

A Partnership for Youth exhibition, Frame of Mind: Storytelling Through Animation showcases the results of an eight-week workshop for teens led by teaching artists from Reel Grrls, during which students develop, animate, and edit their own stop-motion film projects.

Through September 22

Frye Salon

Frye Salon features nearly one hundred fifty paintings from the Founding Collection with selected works acquired since the Museum opened in 1952. The installation approximates the dramatic viewing experience enjoyed by visitors to the art gallery in Charles and Emma Frye’s Seattle home in the first decades of the twentieth century.

September 21, 2019–January 5, 2020

Pierre Leguillon: Arbus Bonus

Pierre Leguillon’s artwork-as-exhibition Arbus Bonus calls attention to the major role famed twentieth-century photographer Diane Arbus’s work has played in defining the image of American postwar popular culture. Bringing together every published magazine spread that features her photography, Leguillon’s project considers the ways in which cultural histories are assembled and disseminated, and proposes more inclusive counter-narratives.

September 21, 2019–August 23, 2020

Unsettling Femininity: Selections from the Frye Art Museum Collection

Bringing together varied depictions of women from the Frye Art Museum’s collection, Unsettling Femininity examines historical conventions of representation during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the deeply entrenched beliefs and power structures they reflect.

September 21, 2019–January 5, 2020

Dress Codes: Ellen Lesperance and Diane Simpson

Dress Codes brings together the work of two contemporary artists who perform acts of translation in relation to clothing’s form and ornamentation. Pressing images of historical garments—and the values encoded within them—through the interpretive interface of the grid, Ellen Lesperance and Diane Simpson connect the everyday language of dress to wide-ranging cultural and political histories.

October 12, 2019–January 26, 2020

Donald Byrd: The America That Is To Be

For four decades, choreographer Donald Byrd has created innovative and startling productions that explore the capacities of dancers’ bodies, the complexities of Africanist aesthetics, and the ways theatrical dance can open audiences to social change. Presenting selected works from across his career, the exhibition reflects Americans’ ongoing struggles to care for our complex diversity.

May 9–August 2, 2020

Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem

With works in all media by nearly eighty artists, Black Refractions celebrates The Studio Museum in Harlem’s role as a site for the dynamic exchange of ideas about art and society. Organized by the American Federation of Arts and The Studio Museum in Harlem, this landmark exhibition proposes a plurality of narratives of black artistic production and multiple approaches to understanding the Studio Museum’s powerful collection.

Archive

Many internationally renowned and locally revered artists have exhibited at the Frye since it first opened in 1952. Find more information on exhibitions and artists in our exhibition archive.

Frye Publications

Catalogues are published by the Frye in conjunction with our exhibitions. Each book features photographs of artworks and installation images accompanied by essays and historical texts by scholars, art historians, and artists. Catalogues are available for purchase in the Museum Store as well as for purchase online.