Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker has much to recommend her as the new director of the Frye. She’s scholarly, curious, engaged and engaging. An international figure, she has strong local roots, first as curator then director of the Vancouver Art Gallery, 1977-91. (Previous post, announcing the appointment, here.)
Her problem is exactly the same as the Frye’s. With nearly unlimited resources and the wide world from which to collect, Charles and Emma Frye chose to concentrate on the academic realists of the Munich Secession Movement. As members of a movement, its artists were forward thinkers. As painters, despite occasionally overheated subject matter, they are unspeakably dreary.
And they are the artists on whom Danzker has chosen to focus. After leaving the Vancouver Art Gallery, she was director of the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich from 1992 to 2005, devoted to Franz von Stuck. Villa Stuck. The name suits.
Art historian Meyer Schapiro usefully distinguished between a painting’s subject matter and object matter. Von Stuck and his associates painted with no strength in their object matter. They weren’t just past their pull date, they don’t have a date, being feeble in any era. While artists around the world surged forward, rocking the foundations of what art could be, these artists clung to overheated and underfed attempts at imagery.
For every painting that holds its own there are five that cry out for
the privacy of storage. Seen rarely and in small groups, they might be
able to charm as artifacts, like lion-footed tables,
heavy brocade curtains and corsets.
Thanks to the terms of the Frye will, however, these weak
vessels must continuously pour themselves out on the wall, cruelly
exposed to familiarity breeding contempt.
Jen Graves wrote today that she didn’t think the Frye could have hired someone better. True, if the museum insists on maintaining the delusion that its collection is tip top. I was looking for somebody who’d figure out a way to free the museum from the dead hand of the past, to move the Frye’s holdings into storage, deaccession and trade up.
(Graves also wrote Danzker’s exhibit, William Hogarth: Nationalism, Mass Media and the Artist, was “awesome-sounding.” Awesome? Hogarth is an illustrator in the worst sense of the word. He belongs in picture books accompanying stories.)
Danzker curated The Munich Secession and America at the Frye earlier this year. It was as meticulous and thoughtful as it was unconvincing.
Danzker is interested in creating closer ties between Northwest art communities, something she did while a curator at VAG in the late 1970s, working with Anne Focke’s and/or, an art center that closed by 1980 and has not been equaled in the NW since.
I’d got nothing against Danzker but her taste. Here’s hoping she can overcome it.
I agreed Frye has a dull and boring art collection, when I go to the Frye it brings sadness and sorrow….time to shine it up,Its time to put the famous art collection in the storage room….for long time.
I’ve always felt a little conflicted about the Frye. I do think their permanent collection is largely dreary, but I also think there’s a place in the art world for the best of what they show, and for their founding vision. I’ve really appreciated that “dead hand of the past” in a way. Do you really want the Frye to shoot for the same goals as the Henry, for example? There’s a lot more to cover, and Seattle’s really a very small place.
Michael: I think diversity of institutions is a good thing and don’t want the Frye to be a copy of the Henry. But that doesn’t mean I want to the Frye to continue to behave as if what Emma and Charles collected is glorious. Remember, they could have picked anything. Instead of hitting a highlight, they stuck (mostly) to a minor moment. Can’t that be acknowledged before we go forward?
[CORRECTED VERSION. I WONDER IF YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO PRINT IT] I didn’t see Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker’s 1980 Hogarth exhibition, but Hogarth is far more interesting as an artist and as an art-historical figure than Regina Hackett allows when she writes, “Hogarth is an illustrator in the worse [sic] sense of the word. He belongs in picture books accompanying stories.” As a student of Meyer Schapiro during the 1960s, I am certain Schapiro would be appalled to see his ideas used to license such knee-jerk formalism. One look at Hogarth’s portraits should be enough to convince anyone–even diehard formalists like Ms Hatchett–of his greatness as an artist. I would add that the artists of the Munich Secession may often have been “dreary” but it is glib, to say the least, to dismiss von Stuck, a symbolist and a follower of Arnold Böcklin, with a bad pun on his name–especially when the dismissal is the work of a critic who bears the name Hackett! Hogarth, von Stuck, and Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker deserve better.
It was the Frye’s money to spend as they wished and it is their vision that should be preserved. What was a minor moment for some folks was nevertheless a major moment for Emma and Charles. The conditions of their bequeath should be honored as close to the letter as is possible. The walls of that museum stand as they do because of their efforts and vision and if the critics of today wish to build their own gift to posterity then let them have at it. In other words, build your own museum and then let history be the judge of what you do. Judge as you would be judged.
Yes, the Frye’s permanent collection is kinda dull and boring but this is where I discovered Henry Darger. One of the highlights of my gallery/museum going and I go to many many. Some of their special exhibits are quite excellent and not at all dull.
You’re right Alan Wallach. I shouldn’t have called Villa Stuck aptly named, even though it’s the truth and nothing but the truth. Shiver me timbers, that work I despise. And Hogarth? More on Hogarth later.
You’re dead right about the Frye collection. A director that wants to highlight it is not a good thing.