Frank-ly Speaking

Though Freed wasn't particularly nostalgic, to look at these paintings is an exercise in nostalgia. You don't have to remember the Jones News Stand to know that many of these paintings recorded a disappearing time through eyes that belonged to a disappearing sort of man -- an old school liberal who didn't particularly like being a businessman, but was not about to be a hippie. Frank Freed had a gentle, civil sense of humor that also seems rare today. I don't agree with CAM director Marti Mayo's conjecture that the Freed exhibit shows us where we all came from artistically -- I think his work was simply "a constructive hobby," and that's how he himself treated it -- but I do agree that the exhibit reminds us why, as Mayo says, "we have a more exciting scene than Omaha. Art communities don't rise out of the sand because evolution dictated it."

No, they rise out of the sand because of people like Frank Freed. And maybe that's enough to justify some time and attention, despite the fact that the MFA exhibit comes uncomfortably close to being a vanity arrangement. A great artist he wasn't. But a great art enabler he was. Not many communities could boast someone like Freed, a painter who quietly did his own thing at the same time that he supported art in an extraordinarily catholic way.

"More than a Constructive Hobby: The Paintings of Frank Freed" is on view through September 8 at the Museum of Fine Arts, 1001 Bissonnet, 639-7300.