History

Two Buildings, One Museum

The Freer Gallery of Art

When the Freer Gallery opened to the public in 1923, it became the first art museum on the National Mall. This marked a turning point in access to the arts and enabled visitors to view American paintings from the Aesthetic Movement of the late nineteenth century, as well as the arts of China, Egypt, the Indian subcontinent, Japan, Korea, and the Islamic world. There were even live peacocks roaming the courtyards freely up until the 1970s. Imagine that! The origin of the Freer Gallery, however, began in 1906, when Charles Lang Freer gave his collection of Asian and American art to the nation, a gift he had proposed to President Theodore Roosevelt a year before. Over the next decade, Freer spent several years researching museums to determine the best design for his art gallery, eventually deciding on a modified version of an Italian renaissance palazzo. In fact, in a meeting with architect Charles Platt at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, Freer jotted down his ideas for a classical, well-proportioned building on a piece of hotel stationery. He believed an Italianate structure with a porticoed courtyard would best unite his ideas about experiencing art and aesthetics, including scale, proportion, harmony, and repose. Platt realized Freer’s vision by designing a classical museum with spaces that enabled visitors to explore the differences as well as find interesting connections in the arts from around the world, both ancient and contemporary, and inform the expansion of Smithsonian museums and galleries to follow.

In 1923, the live peacocks in the courtyard may have been a harmonious complement for what has become a favorite destination at the Freer Gallery, but the history of the Peacock Room was fraught with conflict between friends. It is a tale of artistic license gone too far. Learn more about the room at the center of the feud between artist James McNeill Whistler and British shipping magnate Frederick R. Leyland and how it traveled from house to house before being reconstructed at the Freer Gallery

Tour the Peacock Room Online

Charles Lang Freer made his fortune in the railroad car manufacturing industry in the mid-to late nineteenth century. His interest in the Aesthetic Movement helped to shape his tastes in art, and in the late 1880s, Freer began to actively collect paintings and works on paper by James McNeill Whistler. Freer would collect more than one thousand works by Whistler, who, through his own interest in the arts and cultures of Asia, turned Freer’s attention East. Whistler introduced Freer to the arts of Asia, and by 1906,Freer had amassed a considerable amount of paintings and ceramics from Japan and China as well as artifacts from the ancient Near East.

Freer spent several years researching museums to determine the best design for his art gallery. He eventually decided on a modified version of an Italian renaissance palazzo. In fact, in a meeting with architect Charles Platt at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, Freer jotted down his ideas for a classical, well-proportioned building on a piece of hotel stationery. An Italianate structure with a porticoed courtyard would reflect his ideas about art and aesthetics, including scale, proportion, harmony, and repose. When the building opened to the public and until the 1970s, live peacocks roamed the courtyard, creating, in effect, a living peacock room to rival Whistler’s painted masterpiece.

Learn More About Charles Lang Freer

The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

In 1987, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery opened on the National Mall to become the Smithsonian’s second museum of Asian art. The gallery was built with funds provided by Dr. Arthur M. Sackler, who established the inaugural collection with a gift of one thousand objects. His renowned collection included incomparable examples of Chinese jades and bronzes, among other important works.

In addition to Dr. Sackler, the principal benefactor of the museum that bears his name, the governments of Japan and South Korea contributed to the construction of the building to promote their countries’ artistic and historical achievements. Architect Jean-Paul Carlhian designed the building (and the National Museum of African Art) on three underground levels, with a dramatic pavilion entryway through the Haupt Garden.

The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery can accommodate international loan exhibitions.

See What’s On View

“One wonderful day in 1950 I came upon some Chinese ceramics and Ming furniture. My life has not been the same since.” Arthur M. Sackler

Dr. Arthur M. Sackler was a physician and medical publisher. Born and educated in New York, Dr. Sackler devoted his professional career to the advancement of medicine. His other passion was collecting exemplary objects from Asia, which evolved into the collection that forms the foundation of the gallery’s holdings.

“Great art, great science, and the true humanities are great because they all ‘speak’ the truth,” Dr. Sackler once commented. “No great art, or science, no music or poetry or performance can achieve true greatness without integrity.”

In addition to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian, Dr. Sackler endowed galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at Princeton University, as well as a museum at Harvard University. After his death, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology opened at Peking University in Beijing

Read an Acknowledgment from the Museum (PDF)

The Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex, with twenty-one museums and the National Zoo—shaping the future by preserving heritage, discovering new knowledge, and sharing our resources with the world.

The institution was founded in 1846 with funds from the Englishman James Smithson (1765–1829) according to his wishes “under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” We continue to honor this mission and invite you to join us in our quest. With twenty-one museums and one zoo, 157.2 million museum objects and specimens, 2.2 million library volumes, 148,200 cubic feet of archives, and 2,981 scholarly publications, the Smithsonian continues to expand and fulfill its mission. As the first art museum of the Smithsonian, the Freer Gallery of Art, combined with the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, has a hundred-year legacy of preserving, exhibiting, and interpreting exemplary works as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art.

Learn More about the Smithsonian