SEATTLE, WASHINGTON.- The Frye Art Museum turns fifty years old and presents "The Frye at Fifty: Five Decades of Collecting". The Frye Art Museum opened on February 8, 1952, as "The Charles and Emma Frye Free Public Art Museum." Fifty years later, the Frye continues to present a variety of traditional and contemporary art to the Seattle community. To celebrate the first fifty years, the Frye has mounted an important exhibition of over 120 works of art from the permanent collection. Old favorites stand side by side with lesser-known works of art from the collections and include such a wide variety of artists as Picasso, Tobey, Renoir, and Wyeth. A number of contemporary artists are also represented, including Odd Nerdrum and Alice Neel. Organized in five sections by decade (1950–2000), the exhibition illustrates the influence that each director has had on the Frye collections. One of the threads that tie the exhibition together are the many watercolors collected via the Northwest Watercolor Society exhibitions and other such "group" exhibitions over the years. Originally created to house the extensive art collection of Charles and Emma Frye, the museum also began acquiring additional works of art through purchase and gift. The museum's first director, Walser S. Greathouse, originally Charles Frye's attorney, was executor and trustee of the estate after Mr. Frye's death in 1940. Trained in law, Greathouse was also a Rhodes scholar who took seriously the mission of providing a major cultural resource for the Puget Sound region. In addition to educational programs, concerts, and temporary traveling exhibitions, Greathouse began acquiring nineteenth and twentieth-century American and European representational paintings.