Stirring Up The Frye -- Bold Makeover Adds Sizzle To Seattle's Low- Profile Art Museum

When MaryAnn Barron, the Frye Art Museum's first-ever director of community relations, started penciling out the details of the museum's grand reopening set for next Saturday, she quickly bumped into an obstacle. Who would help greet and guide the big crowds through the museum and its weekend's worth of festivities?

Unlike most museums, the 45-year-old Frye has never had volunteers, those dedicated, hard-working, helpful friends of museums who, at institutions such as the Seattle Art Museum, do everything from licking envelopes to leading school tours. Though committed to publicly displaying its collection, the Frye always acted more like a private art salon than a museum with a public partnership. At the Frye, the hoi polloi was expected to wipe the mud off its feet before entering and to politely admire the art. Otherwise, the public was to stay out of the museum's affairs. It didn't need friends.

Barron temporarily solved her problem for Saturday's opening by "borrowing" volunteers from SAM and advertising for additional helpers. She now has a crew of 85 and says that in the next year the museum will establish its own volunteer program.

As much as its top-to-bottom, $12 million remodeling and expansion, the Frye's interest in cultivating "friends of the museum" is a sign of a new, friendlier, more fashionable Frye.

When the museum officially reopens at noon Saturday after being closed for nearly two years, it will have undergone a remodeling and makeover that reaches far beyond its dramatic new rotunda, unusual eggplant-colored galleries and new amenities including a cafe, an auditorium, and a two-story education wing. The Frye has also undergone a personality change. Led by Richard West, its first professional director, the museum wants to become an active player in Seattle's increasingly sophisticated cultural scene.

It wants to become the kind of jewel-box museum where 25-year-olds meet for espresso and a walk through the galleries. It wants to attract people to evening film series. It wants to exhibit its 19th- and 20th-century American and German art in a way that makes it meaningful to contemporary viewers. It wants to host challenging traveling shows and juried exhibitions.

More than anything, the Frye wants to become relevant. From a small, sleepy institution on First Hill that many Seattle art lovers ignored, it wants to become a vital museum that will attract people who care about art and culture.

The classy remodeling and expansion by Rick Sundberg of Olson/Sundberg Architects, Seattle, should pull in visitors who've never set foot in the Frye before. Though there is little new gallery space, the old spaces, which add up to 12,580 square feet, have been completely overhauled. They now get more natural light, with raised ceilings and a new lighting system.

To better show off the dark undertones of 19th-century artworks, the gallery walls have been painted subtle gradations of grayish/purple eggplant.

"White gallery walls are a contemporary idea," said West. "And 19th-century works, which tend to have darker underpainting, really suffer on white walls. They look like brown smudges. But darker walls make them glow, they tend to look very rich."

Banished forever, West says, is the chockablock, 19th-century salon-style display formerly practiced at the Frye.

The remodeling includes a lot that the public won't notice, such as a modern security system, climate control and upgraded storage and preparation areas, all of which the museum needs to qualify for the kind of traveling exhibits it was unable to qualify for in the past.

Perhaps the most telling symbol of the Frye's new taste for community involvement is the 8,454-square-foot education wing, a new two-story addition that has been outfitted with a kiln and throwing wheels for pottery classes and a light-filled studio for drawing and painting classes. West and his education director, Steve Broocks, plan to offer art classes and to work with school groups and teachers. "We want people to be involved," said West. "We want to offer art experiences for adults and children, at a variety of levels. We hope to see these classrooms filled."

One aspect of the Frye that won't change is its dedication to representational art. Charles and Emma Frye, the wealthy Seattle art lovers who left their fortune to found the museum, collected 19th- and early 20th-century German and American art. Charles Frye's will states that the museum must stick to showing art that is consistent with the original collection.

West says the museum's mission statement is that "the Frye will celebrate the rich tradition and contemporary practice of representational art.

" `Representational' is about the best term I can come up with to describe our focus," said West. "The term `realistic' is too confining, even though that is part of it. The big issue is going to be content. While it's great to be a master of brushwork, I'm going to be looking for art that says something. Anything we show, whether it's contemporary or 19th century, will have to have substance and content. A lot of representational work won't find a home here because it lacks content."

Another thing that won't change at the Frye is that it will remain a private, not-for-profit museum. Charles Frye insisted on no admission charges. Thanks to his business acumen, the museum apparently will always have the financial support to extend such largesse. It is funded entirely through the leases on 30 tracts of prime, downtown real estate that Frye bought in the early part of this century.

The museum's operating budget is about $1.8 million. It is run by a board of trustees made up of M. Lamont Bean, president, the man who masterminded the museum's sweeping makeover; developer and businessman Frank P. Stagen, and attorneys Warren W. Bell and Richard L. Cleveland.

Both Charles and Emma Frye were the children of German immigrants who settled in Iowa. They moved to Seattle in 1885, where Charles went into the meat-packing business. He soon expanded the business, and eventually raised animals in several Western states to supply his meatpacking houses.

The couple also became active participants in Seattle's nascent cultural scene. They collected art on their summer vacations to Germany, and also contributed money to local musical and cultural groups. When Emma died in 1934, Charles specified in his will that his fortune be left for a museum in her memory. The couple had no children. Charles died in 1940. The building of the museum was managed by Seattle lawyer Walser Greathouse, Frye's close friend and attorney. After Greathouse's death in 1966, the museum was run for almost 30 years by his widow, Kay Greathouse.

While the museum is self-supporting, West says it is not as wealthy as many assume. And with the sweeping remodeling and expansion have come increased costs. For instance, the museum now employs a professional staff of about 14. It used to have only two.

Acquiring art to add to the collection, therefore, will not be as easy as simply writing a check. West says the museum does not have an acquisition fund, and that any money available for purchasing art will come out of surpluses to the operating budget. He says that although the museum has always accepted gifts of art, he wants to encourage more. He wants people to think of themselves as museum supporters, museum "friends."

"We want to encourage gifts," said West. "And I hope that once people see what we're doing here, they'll think of us when they decide to donate artworks."

------------------ The Frye's opening ------------------

The Frye Art Museum's grand opening will be from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and next Sunday. Mayor Norm Rice will preside over the dedication and ribbon-cutting at noon Saturday. The museum will be open for self-guided tours both days. There will also be hands-on art activities for children, live music and chamber concerts. Admission to the museum, at 704 Terry Ave., is free. Information: 622-9250.