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Recent Acquisitions


The Frye Art Museum continues to strategically build its collection through purchases and gifts, both deepening existing areas of strength and diversifying holdings to reflect the Museum’s expansive curatorial program and Seattle’s globalized present.

Acquisitions of the last five years demonstrate the Museum’s commitment to growing and contextualizing its distinctive historical collections of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American art while broadening its holdings of contemporary works to embrace previously underrepresented identities, perspectives, and forms of expression. To some extent, acquisitions mirror the Museum’s exhibition history, creating a material record of the institution’s engagement with local, national, and international artists and commemorating the special audience connection formed through temporary presentations. Contemporary artworks chosen for the collection often respond to or complicate the narratives around mediums and genres traditionally associated with the Frye, like painting, landscape, and portraiture.


Baby

Natalie Ball
Cotton cloth, twine, clay, leather, metal jingles, deer legs, and shoes
2018

Black Face Red Bone with Black Bob

Tschabalala Self
Colored pencil, acrylic paint, gouache, charcoal, graphite on archival inkjet print
2021

Black Face with Wide Chest

Tschabalala Self
Colored pencil, acrylic paint, gouache, charcoal, graphite on archival inkjet print
2021

Breathless #6

Jennie C. Jones
Audio tape from the 1992 Kenny-G recording “Breathless”, under plexiglass 
2008

Butterfly

Bony Ramirez
Acrylic, soft oil pastel, color pencil, wallpaper, metal chain, dried coconuts
2021

Covid March (after unemployment, the park, then home)

Dawn Cerny
Wood, drawings, textiles, clipboard, Apoxie Sculpt, polymer clay, paint, found ephemera from studio of Nancy Shaver
2021

Disaster Kitchen

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung
Oil, collage, plastic garbage bag, camouflage pants
2008-2011

Dress for Success

Rose Nestler
Leather, thread, batting, grommets, hooks
2018