Related to this, Comparative Galleries have been added to show brass figures in the Fry Collection, side by side with similar objects in public museums and private collections. Click HERE to enter.

Below are the objects in the Walter Logan Fry virtual galleries. They are arranged in broad, and sometimes imprecise categories. Click on the icons below to enter each gallery. Note that some galleries will display many objects, like the galleries for figures, textiles, jewelry or raffia bags; while other galleries will contain just a single object, or a small number of related objects. Except for the figures and mask, which are universally conferred the status of fine art, the objects of wood, fiber and steel are compared with similar objects in modern fine arts museums, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D. C., Nasher Art Museum at Duke University and The British Museum.

At this point, an important observation should be made. In the colonial period of the late 1890s and early 1900s, objects made in Africa were often relegated to museums of natural history, like the Peabody Museums of Harvard and Yale, or the American Museum of National History in New York City, New York; there to sit beside rocks and butterflies and dinosaurs. Modern museum practice now places such objects squarely within the collections of the world's most comprehensive museums of fine art, again, including The British Museum, The Met, NMAFA and Nasher. You will see such comparative objects in the galleries below.

As I look at the collection, I marvel that in his mid-twenties (nearly identical in age to Etta Becker-Donner, who was in Liberia during an overlapping period of years), my father was, in his collection habits, as much an anthropologist as he was a collector of fine art; but also had the foresight (or serendipity) to recognize that such work would soon become the part of the canon of fine art, collected by the world's most prestigious fine arts museums. Perhaps it should merely be said that Walter Logan Fry saw all that he collected as fine art, and it took museum practice nearly a half century to follow the same path.

His entire collection was all self-reinforcing; his photographs and letters and art all inform one another, leading to a broader and more informed appreciation of African art today.

Figures (9)

Mende Mask (1)

Elephant Tail Whisk (1)

Hammocks (2)

Spear or Blade Currency (1)

Sword and Scabbord (1)

Sieves (2)

Country Cloth (7)

Crops or Whips (2)

Gourd Cup and Idiophone (2)

Adornment (6)

Adornment (8)

Kissi Money (4)

Raffia Bags (9)

Raffia Bags (6)

Coins (7)

Raffia Purses (4)

Raffia Cloth (2)

Leather Goods (3)

Islamic Textiles (2)

Rattan Basket (1)