The Freer Art Gallery: Curated Picks

Smack in the center of the United States’ capital, and one of the most visited galleries in the world, The Freer Art Gallery boasts a geographically and temporally wide range of Asian art as well as a collection of American art. Housing works that span the past 6,000 years, and dedicated to displaying and researching Asian art, the gallery strangely began as one that solely displayed works by James Whistler (it was founded by Whistler’s greatest collector). In 1908, a few years after the gallery opened, Charles Moore donated his collection of 8,000 Asian artworks. Charles Lang Freer, the gallery’s founder, bequeathed the museum and its collection to D.C.’s Smithsonian Institute, becoming the institute’s first museum space dedicated to fine art. The Freer Gallery has always been a cite for scholars and researchers, maintaining the largest Asian art research library in the U.S., and making its rare archives accessible to academics and professionals alike. The gallery also hosts public lectures and symposiums on Asian art, and publishes an academic journal on Asian art. Its curators are constant contributors to the ongoing debates and research into the immense region’s visual culture.