![]() ![]() (1849–1921), John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) and others to be complete, and so there have been no additions to the American works since Freer’s death. Freer considered his American holdings of 1,708 works by Whistler, Thomas Wilmer Dewing (1850–1938), Dwight William Tryon (1849–1925), Abbott Handerson Thayer There are also small but important groups of early Christian art and Egyptian art. Since his death, Freer’s legacy of approximately 7,500 works of Asian art has grown to 25,000 objects through purchase and gifts, and the collection includes art from China, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Central Asia. Freer believed in the universality of beauty, and he delighted in finding aesthetic affinities among the art of such divergent cultures as Neolithic China and 19th-century America. The collection of the Freer Gallery spans 6,000 years and many different cultures, reflecting the taste of its founder, Detroit businessman Charles Lang Freer. Afflicted by debilitating illness, Freer died in 1919 without ever seeing the gallery. Freer then devoted his time to augmenting and refining his gift of art. Only after President Theodore Roosevelt took a personal interest in the matter did the Regents finally accept the deed of gift in 1906. Its governing body, the Board of Regents, wished to maintain the Smithsonian’s scientific focus and hesitated to accept the gift. ![]() In 1904, Freer offered his art collection to the nation to be held in trust by the Smithsonian Institution. With Whistler’s encouragement, Freer also began to collect Asian art in 1887 and, by the time of his death, he had assembled a pre-eminent group of masterpieces that he purchased in Asia, as well as in Paris, London and New York. ![]() Freer eventually formed the world’s most important collection of Whistler paintings, drawings, watercolors and prints. He limited his selections to the work of a few living artists and concentrated especially on American expatriate Whistler. The Freer is committed to expanding public knowledge of the collections through exhibitions, research and publications.Ĭharles Lang Freer (1854–1919), an industrialist and self-taught connoisseur, began purchasing American art in the 1880s. Besides Asian art, the Freer houses a collection of 19th- and early 20th-century American art, including the world’s largest number of works by American-born, British-based artist James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903). The Freer Gallery of Art was the first museum of the Smithsonian Institution to be dedicated to the fine arts. Sackler Gallery)Īpproximate Number of Objects in Freer Collection: 26,000Īpproximate Number of Objects in Freer and Sackler Collections: 41,000 Sackler Gallery)Īnnual Budget (federal and trust) FY 2016: $33 million (Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Total Full-time Employees: 103 (Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, African Art. ![]()
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