Displaying items by tag: freer gallery of art

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe has announced a $1 million gift to the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian Asian art museums, to support their ongoing work to promote his country’s art and culture.

The gift was announced during a dinner Wednesday at the Freer that was part of the Japanese leader’s official visit to Washington.

“I would like to express my appreciation to the Freer Gallery of Art for its dedication to Japanese art but also for giving us such a wonderful venue to promote people-to-people exchanges between Japan and the United States,” Abe said.

The Freer Gallery of Art – the Smithsonian’s first art museum – will close for 18 months for renovations beginning Jan. 4, 2016, officials announced Wednesday.

Repairs to the 180,000-square-foot building, a National Historic Landmark, will include updating the climate control systems and installing technological upgrades to its auditorium and storage and conservation areas. In addition, some of the galleries will be returned to the original aesthetic created by architect Charles Platt.

The Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art in Washington, DC, are due to release their entire collections online on January 1, 2015. More than 40,000 works, from ancient Chinese jades to 13th-century Syrian metalwork and 19th-century Korans, will be accessible through high-resolution images without copyright restrictions for non-commercial use. The vast majority—nearly 35,000 objects—have never been seen by the public.

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery are the first Smithsonian museums and the only Asian art museums to complete the labor-intensive process of digitizing and releasing their entire collections online.

In 1912, Charles Lang Freer, founder of the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., put two rare antique biblical manuscripts on public view in his Detroit home. Over 100 years later, the Washington Codex, one of the oldest manuscripts of the four Gospels in the world, and an ancient parchment volume of Deuteronomy and Joshua, are on view in the Freer’s Peacock Room, which was decorated by James McNeill Whistler in 1876.

The last time the manuscripts were exhibited was in 2006, when they were part of a landmark exhibition of Bibles created before the year 1000. Due to their extreme sensitivity to light and fragility, the Peacock Room’s windows will remain shuttered on the third Thursday of each month.

The manuscripts will be on view at the Freer Gallery of Art through February 16, 2014.

Washington, D.C.’s National Mall, which includes the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Freer Gallery of Art, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Art, and the National Museum of African Art, will be closed due to the first government shutdown in 17 years. A number of non-government run museums including the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Phillips Collection plan on staying open during the shutdown. The National Mall attracts millions of visitors from across the globe and generates millions of dollars in tourism business per day.

The government shutdown was spurred by Congress’ inability to reach an agreement on spending. There is no end date for the closure, which began on Tuesday and has forced approximately 800,000 federal workers to stay home from their jobs.

The Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is currently hosting the exhibition Off the Beaten Path: Early Works by James McNeill Whistler. The show commemorates the 155^th anniversary of Whistler’s beginnings as an artist, which was sparked by a trip from Paris to the Rhineland. Before setting off on his expedition, Whistler established two goals – first, to visit Rembrandt’s home city of Amsterdam and second, to make his mark on the art world.

While he never made it to the Netherlands during his voyage, Whistler created drawings, etchings and watercolors depicting what he saw along the way. Later in his career, these early country scenes and portrayals of innkeepers and shopkeepers would go on to shape Whistler’s selection of subject matter, composition, use of light and shadow, and perspective.

Off the Beaten Path will be on view at the Freer Gallery through September 28, 2014.

The latest update to Google’s browser-based map service allows visitors to navigate museums across the world with their smartphones. While sprawling institutions made up of various wings and galleries can appear cumbersome, Google hopes to alleviate confusion by making virtual floor plans for dozens of museums and libraries in nine countries available to users.

The recent update includes interior views of shopping malls, airports, train stations, and convention centers, but the presence of museum layouts is particularly welcomed. While 30 museums in the United States are currently mapped out, museums that are not already included can upload their own floor plans if they wish to be included in the project.

Maps of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Art Institute in Chicago, the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, the British Museum in London, the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, and the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Japan are currently available.