In January, the Frye Art Museum came out with the news that it’s working on a partnership to sell its parking lot to build two 33-story towers full of apartments that will be as expensive as the skyrocketing market will bear.
People are noticing, they’re objecting, and they’re asking questions, because people trust the Frye. Its admission is free to all, and so is its parking (for now). Its exhibitions have boldly addressed issues of economic inequality, displacement, race, and the housing crisis in Seattle. Founder Charles Frye, the son of German immigrants and a meatpacker by trade, didn’t see an oil painting until he was 35 years old. His tastes ran to the gilded and European, but he did stipulate that his museum be forever free of charge, making it the only art museum in the city where no one is economically excluded.
Plenty of museums are in the real-estate game; the Frye is not unusual. It’s sitting on a parking lot in a prime central location in the middle of a booming market, and its neighborhood, while still quiet today, is already zoned for high-rises that will inevitably arrive. Of course the Frye would develop now. But its ethos also suggests that it might be more intentional about it than, say, the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, which sold its air rights for millions to builders of super-luxury condos, or Seattle Art Museum, which financed its expansion by jumping into bed with Washington Mutual, the doomed financial giant that became notorious as a key player in the subprime scam that brought the US economy to a standstill in 2008…
