Betsy G. Fryberger : An Oral History

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract
Betsy G. Fryberger worked at the Stanford Museum for forty years, the first twenty when it was the Stanford University Museum of Art, the second twenty after it was renamed the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford. Fryberger reflects on a career in the art museum from a part-time curator to a later larger role. She recounts the effects of the Loma Prieta Earthquake on the art collections; prints acquired by the museum during her tenure; the role of the Committee for Art at Stanford; and working with people including Lorenz Eitner, Nate Oliveira, Frank Lobell, and Thomas Seligman. Fryberger also shares memories of exhibitions she curated and students she worked with.
Summary
Early childhood and family life • Education and beginning of curatorial career • Influential teachers • Work at the Art Institute of Chicago • Arrival in the Bay Area and work with R.E. Lewis in San Francisco • Stanford Museum pre-1970s • Early exhibitions: Toulouse-Lautrec and Käthe Kollwitz • Committee for Art and the print docents • Faculty participation in exhibition program • Early collecting by Jane Stanford • 1906 earthquake and damage • Thomas Welton Stanford • Harry Peterson • Governor Stanford locomotive installed in Museum rotunda • Pedro de Lemos • Committee for Art’s Treasure Market raises funds for acquisitions • Lorenz Eitner • Art Department PhD students help catalogue parts of the collection • B. Gerald Cantor gift of Rodin sculptures • Committee for Art support of Art Department lecture series • Anderson Collection at Stanford • Faculty exhibitions: Frank Lobdell and Nathan Oliveira • Campus unrest in the late 1960s and early 1970s • Morris & Company and Whistler exhibitions • The Stanford Museum Journal • Gwen John exhibition and catalogue • Work begins on the drawing collection catalogue • Extended discussion of the Morris & Company exhibition and catalogue • David Park and Paul Klee exhibitions • Discussion of prints vs. drawings • 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake: Museum closure and relocation to Encina Gym, FEMA, and fundraising efforts • Exhibitions during Museum closure • Museum development under Thomas Seligman •Support from the University’s Board of Trustees and John Friedenrich • Expanding the curatorial and administrative staff • Museum outreach to academic departments • The Changing Garden exhibition and catalogue • Teaching on and off campus • The Torbert bequest • Print Council of America • Women in museum director positions • Directors Advisory Committee • Extended discussion of The Changing Garden exhibition

Description

Type of resource text
Extent 1 text file
Place Stanford (Calif.)
Publisher Stanford Historical Society
Date created January 15, 2018 - 2018-05-03
Language English
Digital origin born digital

Creators/Contributors

Interviewee Fryberger, Betsy G.
Creator Fryberger, Betsy G.
Interviewer Humburg, Judee
Publisher Stanford Historical Society

Subjects

Subject Fryberger, Betsy G.
Subject Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University
Subject Museum curators
Subject College art museums
Genre Interview

Bibliographic information

Biographical Profile

Betsy Geraghty Fryberger is the Burton and Deedee McMurtry Curator of Prints and Drawings, Emerita at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts (formerly Stanford University Museum of Art). She retired in 2009 after working for forty years at the museum.
As curator of prints and drawings, Fryberger organized about a hundred exhibitions, often with catalogues, and co-edited the Stanford museum’s journal. She also organized loan exhibitions that included works by such major artists as Goya, Piranesi, Whistler, Kollwitz, Klee, and Picasso. In 2003 her ambitious exhibition The Changing Garden: Four Centuries of European and American Gardens received high praise. Over the years, with the support of the museum directors, Professor Lorenz Eitner and later Thomas K. Seligman, she enlarged the permanent collection of prints and drawings from a few hundred to about 1,500 drawings and more than 5,000 prints.
Fryberger was born in 1935 in Chicago, Illinois. She received her BA with honors in art history from Bryn Mawr College in 1956. During college she spent two summers as an intern at The Art Institute of Chicago in the Print and Drawing Department. She married David Fryberger in 1957 and the next year received an MA from Harvard University, also in art history. After working briefly at The University of Chicago Press, she joined the staff of The Art Institute of Chicago as an assistant curator of prints and drawings. In 1967 she and her husband moved to the Bay Area, settling in Palo Alto. Fryberger worked in San Francisco for R. E. Lewis, a dealer in old-master prints, Japanese prints, and Indian miniatures and then joined the very small staff of the Stanford University Museum of Art.
In her retirement Fryberger volunteers at two historic Palo Alto gardens: giving lectures and serving as a docent at the Elizabeth F. Gamble Garden; and working at the Williams Garden at the Museum of American Heritage. In addition, she is an active interviewer for the Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program.
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Finding Aid
Title
Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program Interviews
Location https://purl.stanford.edu/fg872xy5054
Location SC0932
Repository Stanford University. Libraries. Department of Special Collections and University Archives

Access conditions

Use and reproduction
The materials are open for research use and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an attribution. For commercial permission requests, please contact the Stanford University Archives (universityarchives@stanford.edu).
Copyright
Copyright © The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

Collection

Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program interviews, 1999-2022

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