 Gabriel von Max | The Frye Art Museum has mounted a series of exhibitions in recent years meant to encourage fresh examinations of the painting collection assembled by its founders, Charles and Emma Frye. The current exhibition, The Munich Secession and America, is by far the most ambitious attempt to date to place the Fyre’s own works in a larger historical perspective. KUOW art critic Gary Faigin joins us with to share his observations on this show. Small, private art museums are specialized, occasionally eccentric institutions, reflecting as they do the taste of a particular collector and a particular time. The Barnes Collection in Philadelphia, following the strict dictates of its long-dead founder Alfred Barnes, is notorious for displaying landmark paintings by modern masters on burlap-covered walls alongside a wild assortment of unusual companions like folk art, African masks, and antique barn hinges. |
