XnViewMP 1.7.2, Sequoia 15.0.1

I click the XnViewMP logo in dock. XnViewMP starts up. Beachball begins spinning. Never finishes. I force quit and reclick the icon to start up. The beachball spins until I click IGNORE. Xnview goes solid black screen, then starts up.
The startup always opens a folder of 1,724 images that contains 5GB data. Is the number of images slowing the opening process?