Since its opening in 1952, the Frye has maintained its dedication to the art and culture of the present through collecting and exhibiting contemporary art. This practice is guided by the example of museum founders Charles and Emma Frye, who amassed a collection of paintings made within their own lifetimes, often by purchasing works directly from living artists. Over the past fifteen years, the museum has intentionally focused on broadening its holdings to include previously underrepresented identities, perspectives, and forms of expression. This ongoing work is an essential facet of the institution’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

A Living Legacy marks the Frye’s seventieth anniversary, bringing together eight artworks—all acquired in 2022 and on view at the museum for the first time—by Amoako Boafo, Sky Hopinka, Gisela McDaniel, Bony Ramirez, Tschabalala Self, Ann Leda Shapiro, and Sadie Wechsler. Ranging from altered photographs to mixed-media assemblages, the works expand or complicate narratives around genres such as landscape and portraiture traditionally associated with the Frye’s Founding Collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American art. The exhibition reflects the museum’s engagement with both local and global artists and celebrates the collection as a unique, ever-evolving, and always imperfect chronicle of artistic production: a living legacy of the Fryes’ visionary patronage.