{"id":878,"date":"2009-08-05T15:39:49","date_gmt":"2009-08-05T22:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/08\/new_frye_director_whats_wrong\/"},"modified":"2009-08-05T15:39:49","modified_gmt":"2009-08-05T22:39:49","slug":"new_frye_director_whats_wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/08\/new_frye_director_whats_wrong.html","title":{"rendered":"New Frye director: What’s wrong with this picture?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"joannefrye.jpg\"<\/span>Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker has much to recommend her as the new director of the Frye<\/a>. 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<\/a>, 1977-91. (Previous post, announcing the appointment, here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. As members of a movement, its artists were forward thinkers. As painters, despite occasionally overheated subject matter, they are unspeakably dreary. <\/p>\n

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<\/a> in Munich from 1992 to 2005, devoted to Franz von Stuck<\/a>. Villa Stuck. The name suits.<\/p>\n

Art historian Meyer Schapiro<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n

For every painting that holds its own there are five that cry out for
\nthe privacy of storage. Seen rarely and in small groups, they might be
\nable to charm as artifacts, like lion-footed tables,
\nheavy brocade curtains and corsets.
\nThanks to the terms of the Frye will, however, these weak
\nvessels must continuously pour themselves out on the wall, cruelly
\nexposed to familiarity breeding contempt.<\/p>\n

Jen Graves wrote<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n

(Graves also wrote Danzker’s exhibit, William Hogarth: Nationalism, Mass Media and the Artist<\/em>, was “awesome-sounding.” Awesome? Hogarth is an illustrator in the worst sense of the word. He belongs in picture books accompanying stories.)<\/p>\n

Danzker curated The Munich Secession and America<\/i><\/a> at the Frye earlier this year. It was as meticulous and thoughtful as it was unconvincing. <\/p>\n

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<\/a>, an art center that closed by 1980 and has not been equaled in the NW since.<\/p>\n

I’d got nothing against Danzker but her taste. Here’s hoping she can overcome it.
 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}