Meet Frieda: the 90 Year Old Museum Curator

By Rachel Belle

Listen to Feature: Seattle’s 90 Year Old Art Curator

Frieda Sondland, 90, has been coming to Seattle’s Frye Art
Museum every day for the past 15 years.

“I just walk from where I live to the Frye and back
home. It’s exactly a mile, round trip.”

Sharp as a tack, and incredibly warm and sweet,
Frieda’s stories are sprinkled with pet names like
‘sweetheart’ and ‘beloved.’ After 15 years of looking at
the Frye’s art collection, Frieda was asked to co-curate a
show with it’s director Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker.

The exhibit is open now, and it’s titled “Beloved:
Pictures at an Exhibition.”

“She has made a selection of paintings that many people
haven’t seen for a long time. I think that’s made the
exhibition very interesting,” says Birnie Danzker.

Frieda earned her title of co-curator by taking a
stand, and asking the museum what ever happened to the
Frye Family paintings donated to the city.

“I came here and I said ‘Where are the Fryes?’ ‘The
Fryes are in storage.’ I said ‘What are they doing in
storage?’ It took me almost a year to get them out of
storage. What I did, finally, I said, ‘I am going to the
newspapers if you don’t put out the Fryes!”

I told Frieda she must be a very powerful woman to be
so influential.

“It’s not power, I just have a big mouth, sweetheart. I
opened my mouth. Because I kept thinking ‘The Fryes are
such a generous couple to leave all their paintings to the
care of the city of the Seattle.’ And how did they take
care of it? They put them in the vault.”

The paintings, many from the 14th century, are out of
the vault now. Since Frieda’s show unveiled, museum
attendance has gone up nearly 40%, in part because of the
art but also because people want to meet Frieda.

“Frieda now has her fans,” Birnie Danzker says. “When
she comes into the building, people come up to her. We even had one visitor
who brought a painting in a bag, and said ‘Frieda, I’m
wondering if I should hang this in my home.’ Frieda gave
advice. People are very interested to learn more about
Frieda, and about how one lives with artwork and what kind
of relationship one can develop with a work of art. That’s
her great gift to us, I think.”

Frieda was born in Berlin, and when she was 16 1/2,
married and pregnant, her family was driven out by the
Nazis. They fled to Uruguay, where she worked as a haute
fashion designer until 1953, the year she moved to Seattle
with her husband and little girl. Some of the pieces she
selected for the exhibit depict images reminiscent of her
childhood in Berlin. There’s a portrait of a German Jewish
baker and landscapes of two Bavarian rivers she visited as
a girl. The Frye is also a place that reminds Frieda of
her late husband.

“My husband passed away, at one time, and so it was
wonderful just to have a place to go where he was happy.
He loved to look at the paintings the last few years of
his life. The Frye has become a bond for me.”

When I asked her if she’s always been interested in
art, she told this adorable little story that pretty much
sums up her spirit and love for life.

“I took ballet classes but Frieda’s arms were too
short, her neck was too short. The ballet teacher said to
me ‘Frieda, you’ll never be a ballerina.’ I said ‘Ok, but
at least I have the joy of learning how to dance.”

Frieda’s “Beloved”
exhibit runs through April 18th.

(Photos: Top-Frieda Sondland posing with one of her
favorite paintings. Bottom-Frieda Sondland and Jo-Anne
Birnie Danzker, director of the Frye Museum, in front of
portraits of Charles and Emma Frye)