The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery joins the Freer Gallery of Art to form the Smithsonian Institution's national museums of Asian art. The Sackler celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2012.
The gallery is located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., adjacent to the S. Dillon Ripley Center and National Museum of African Art and directly behind the Smithsonian Castle. Its main gallery spaces are underground, and the building connects to both the Freer Gallery of Art and the National Museum of African Art. The Sackler's main entrance is situated off of the gardens of the Smithsonian Castle along Independence Avenue.
The Freer|Sackler holds in trust the nation’s collections of Asian art and of American art of the late nineteenth-century aesthetic movement. The Sackler Gallery hosts exhibitions of contemporary art from Asia, recent acquisitions, and international loans. More than 11,000 objects from the collections are available online.
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The Sackler Gallery opened in 1987 after Arthur M. Sackler, a research physician, donated some 1,000 Asian art objects to the Smithsonian, as well as $4 million toward the gallery's construction. The highlights from his gift include early Chinese bronzes, jades, paintings and lacquerware, ancient Near Eastern ceramics and metalware, and sculpture from South and Southeast Asia.
The gallery's collections since have expanded to include the Vever Collection, an important assemblage of the Islamic arts of the book from the 11th to the 19th century; 19th- and 20th-century Japanese prints and contemporary porcelain; Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean paintings; arts of rural India; contemporary Chinese ceramics; and photography.
The museum was designed by Jean Paul Carlhan of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott. Carlhan used pink granite exterior surfaces to relate to the Smithsonian Castle and gray granite to relate to the Freer.[1]
The Sackler Gallery is connected by an underground exhibition space to the neighboring Freer Gallery of Art. Although their collections are stored and exhibited separately, the two museums share a director, administration, and staff.
The Sackler Gallery hosts a broad range of exhibitions highlighting aspects of Asian art. In 2011, the museum's exhibition schedule included "Power|Play: China's Empress Dowager" (featuring rare portraits of Empress Dowager Cixi) and "Family Matters: Portraits from the Qing Court."
Unlike the Freer, the Sackler Gallery can accommodate international loan exhibitions. Past exhibitions include "Echoes of the Past: The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan", "Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur" and "The Tsars and the East: Gifts from Turkey and Iran in the Moscow Kremlin". International loan exhibitions have also included "Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the 15th Century"; "When Kingship Descended from Heaven: Masterpieces of Mesopotamian Art from the Louvre"; "Court Arts of Indonesia"; "Korean Art of the 18th Century: Splendor & Simplicity"; and "A Basketmaker in Rural Japan."
The Freer|Sackler provides several online resources for exploring the art and culture of Asia and the Freer's American art collections. Besides the collections objects viewable online, thousands of photographs, archeological diaries, maps, and archaeological squeezes (impressions of carvings) have been digitized and are used by researchers from around the world.
The galleries' "Explore + Learn" pages go in-depth into some of the museums' most popular exhibitions, including Waves at Matsushima and Shahnama: 1000 Years of the Persian Book of Kings, with interactive high-resolution images, videos and galleries.
For educators and families, the museum provides project ideas and resources including printable handouts, teachers' guides, and lesson plans. F|S also produces podcasts of concerts, storytelling, and lectures, and videos on the F|S YouTube channel.
The Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Auditorium, located in the Freer, provides a venue for a broad variety of free public programs relating to the collections, including exceptional concerts of Asian music and dance, lectures, chamber music, and dramatic presentations. It is also known for its well-curated film series, highlighting a wide variety of Asian cultures.
The Freer|Sackler also presents family programs such as ImaginAsia and ExplorAsia, as well as family festivals, such as the annual Nowruz celebration in March. Hands-on workshops, including the popular Inner-Artist, Art ID, and educator workshops, allow visitors to tour and then create their own artistic responses.
Free drop-in tours guide visitors through both featured exhibitions and specific themes in both the Freer and Sackler galleries, and a wide range of public lectures provide in-depth experiences with prominent artists and scholars.
The Freer|Sackler Archives houses over 120 important manuscripts collections. The core collection is the personal papers of Freer Gallery of Art founder Charles Lang Freer, which includes his purchase records, diaries, and personal correspondence with public figures such as artists, dealers and collectors. Freer's extensive correspondence with James McNeill Whistler forms one of the largest sources of primary documents about the American artist. Other significant collections in the Archives includes the papers (notebooks, letters, photography, squeezes) and personal objects of the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld (1879–1946), documenting his research at Samarra, Persepolis and Pasargadae. The papers of Carl Whiting Bishop, Dwight William Tryon, Myron Bement Smith, Benjamin March and Henri Vever are also located at the Archives. The Archives also holds over 125,000 photographs of Asia dating from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Highlights of photographic holdings include the Henry and Nancy Rosin Collection of 19th century photography of Japan, the 1903-1904 photographs of the Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi, and photographs of Iran by Antoin Sevruguin.[2]
The Freer|Sackler Library is the largest Asian art research library in the United States. Open to the public five days a week (except federal holidays) without appointment, the library collection consists of more than 86,000 volumes, including nearly 2,000 rare books. Half the volumes are written and catalogued in Asian languages.
Originating from the collection of four thousand monographs, periodical issues, offprints, and sales catalogues that Charles Lang Freer donated to the Smithsonian Institution as part of his gift to the nation. The F|S Library maintains the highest standards for collecting materials an active program of purchases, gifts, and exchanges.
In July 1987 the library moved to its new home in the Sackler Gallery. Today it supports activities of both museums, such as collection development, exhibition planning, publications, and other scholarly and educational projects. Its published and unpublished resources—in the fields of Asian art and archaeology, conservation, painting, sculpture, architecture, drawings, prints, manuscripts, books, and photography—are available to museum staff, outside researchers, and the visiting public.
Care of the collections began before the museums came into existence as Charles Lang Freer, the founder of the Freer Gallery of Art, hired Japanese painting restorers to care for his works and to prepare them for their eventual home as part of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1932, the Freer Gallery of Art hired a full-time Japanese restorer and created what was to become the East Asian Painting Conservation Studio. The Technical Laboratory, and the first use of scientific methods for the study of art at the Smithsonian Institution, started in 1951 when the chemist Rutherford J. Gettens moved from the Fogg Museum at Harvard University to the Freer. The East Asian Painting Conservation Studio and the Technical Laboratory merged in 1990 to form the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research.[3]
The conservators in the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research care for and treat works of art in the collection and prepare them for exhibition. Conservation-restoration at the Freer|Sackler is broken into four sections: Asian Paintings (one of the only US-based East Asian painting conservation studios to use traditional methods), Objects, Paper, and Exhibitions. Together they work to ensure the long-term preservation and storage, safe handling, exhibition, and transport of artworks in the permanent collection, as well as those on loan.
Conservators are responsible for conducting technical examinations of objects already in the collection and those under consideration for acquisition. They also collaborate frequently with the department’s scientists on technical and applied research. Training and professional outreach efforts are an integral part of the department’s commitment to educating future conservators, museum professionals, and the public about conservation.