Freer Gallery of Art

Home to one of the world's finest collections of Asian art, the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art was made possible by an endowment from Detroit industrialist Charles L. Freer, who retired in 1900 and devoted the rest of his life to collecting art. Opened in 1923, the collection includes more than 27,000 works of art from the Far and Near East. The Japanese screens, Chinese porcelains, Korean stoneware, Islamic manuscripts, Indian sculptures, and other items date from Neolithic times to the 20th century.

Highlights of the gallery include the rich collections of exquisite Imperial Chinese luxury decorative arts; many masterpieces of Buddhist art such as 12th-century Japanese sculpture of a Buddhist approaching Nirvana, seated on a giant lotus blossom throne; 10th-century Indian and Himalayan sculptures, especially the bronze of the dancing god Shiva, and his voluptuous, bare-breasted wife, the goddess Parvati; and two rooms full of paintings by James McNeill Whistler. Whistler was a friend of Freer's and introduced him to Asian art -- be sure not to bypass the Peacock Room, a jewelbox of a space that Whistler designed for a British shipping magnate, with gold peacock murals on deep peacock-blue walls, and a lush peacock-feather pattern on the gold leaf ceiling. Freer paid $30,000 for the entire room and moved it from London to the United States in 1904.

Free highlight tours meet at 12:15 every day, except Wednesday and Federal holidays, at the information desks. Take advantage of the Freer's wide menu of excellent, informative individual brochures on specialized subjects represented in the collections. There are brochures on Islamic art, Japanese painting, Buddhist art, South Asian sculpture, and Near Eastern ceramics, among others. At the Imaginasia workshops, held most weekends at the adjacent Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (a lower-level exhibition gallery connects the two buildings), children ages 6 to 14 work on projects such as origami and learning Asian board games.