LOCATION The galleries are located on the National Mall, the grassy area between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, steps from the Smithsonian Metro stop. The Sackler Gallery is located at 1050 Independence Avenue, SW. The Freer Gallery of Art is located at Jefferson Drive at 12th Street, SW. The two museums are connected by an underground exhibition space.
HOURS AND ADMISSION Hours are from 10 AM to 5:30 PM every day except Dec. 25, and admission is free.
The gallery opened in 1987 to house a gift of some 1,000 works of Asian art from Dr. Arthur M. Sackler (1913–1987), a research physician and medical publisher from New York City. Among the highlights of his gift were early Chinese bronzes and jades, Chinese paintings and lacquerware, ancient Near Eastern ceramics and metalware, and sculpture from South and Southeast Asia.
Sackler also donated $4 million toward construction of the gallery.
Since 1987, the gallery's collections 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 village India; contemporary Chinese ceramics; and photography.
International loan exhibitions have included Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the 15th Century; Yani: the Brush of Innocence, featuring paintings by a 14-year-old Chinese prodigy; 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 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 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 of the Freer and Sackler galleries, including concerts of Asian music and dance, films, lectures, chamber music, and dramatic presentations.
Seascapes: Tryon & Sugimoto July 12 - January 25 For the first time since the opening of the Freer Gallery of Art in 1923, works from the American collection will be shown with works from outside the museum. A series of 22 pastels of the Maine coast, known collectively as "Sea Moods" (1915-1916), by American landscape painter Dwight Tryon (1849 -1925) will be on view at the Sackler galleries, juxtaposed with six black and white photographs of the sea by contemporary Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto from his ongoing series "Seascapes." Although the works are separated by history and medium, they are linked by a common subject-the sea- and a concern with documenting the perceptual activity of the artist as well as a natural motif. The formal resonances between these two series will encourage quiet contemplation and allow viewers to discern aesthetic connections between the diverse artworks on view throughout the Freer and Sackler galleries.
MURAQQA': Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin May 3 - August 3 Among the most remarkable of Mughal paintings and calligraphies are those commissioned by the Emperors Jahangir (1605-27) and Shah Jahan (1627-58) for display in lavish imperial albums. A window into the world-views of the emperors, these exquisite images depicts the emperors, the imperial family in a relaxed private settings, Sufi saints and mystics, allies and courtiers and natural history subjects. Many folios are full-page paintings with superb figural borders; others are collages of European, Persian, and Mughal works collected by the emperors. Produced by the atelier's leading artists, they reveal the conceptual and artistic sophistication of the arts of the book at its apex in the early seventeenth century. The exhibition brings together 86 masterpieces-many not previously exhibited in the United States-from the renowned collection of the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.
Yellow Mountain: China's Ever-Changing Landscape May 31 - August 24 Yellow Mountain (Mount Huang or Huangshan) is arguably one of the most beautiful mountains in China. For centuries artists have endeavored to capture the ever-changing appearance of the area. Their interpretations include seventeenth-century woodblock prints and mountainscapes created by monk-painters who either had traveled to or had lived in the wilderness surrounding Yellow Mountain during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paintings and prints of the mountain, whether done from nature or from memory by well-known and little-recognized artists, complete this look at the changing landscape of Huangshan.
Perspectives: Y.Z. Kami March 15 - October 13 The Perspectives series of contemporary Asian art resumes with an exhibition of new works by artist Y.Z Kami. Born in Tehran, Y.Z. Kami draws from Eastern and Western aesthetic and mystical traditions to create large-scale works that explore the movement between the physical world and the inward spiritual journey. A student of philosophy, he developed a particular interest in the human face and its relationship to the divine which has inspired several groups of portraits. This exhibition presents two monumental portraits from his current series depicting individuals in meditation. Each subject, rendered with a soft focus and simple palette, emanates a sense of peace and introspection. In the third and largest work on view, poetry and religious architecture also give form to the divine. Using collage and verses from the Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), the artist arranges words like bricks in a spiral of calligraphy that invokes the feeling of looking through a dome or the ecstatic movement of a ritual dance.
CONTINUING INDEFINITELY AT THE ARTHUR M. SACKLER GALLERY
The Arts of China A variety of materials, techniques, and motifs, which span almost six thousand years, are explored in this exhibition of 228 objects highlighting the Sackler Gallery's permanent holdings of Chinese art. The exhibition features jades and bronzes, Buddhist sculpture and wall paintings, glass, lacquer ware, furniture, and paintings from the Neolithic period to the 20th century.
Contemporary Japanese Porcelain Twentieth-century Japanese artists give fresh interpretations to the time-honored art of porcelain in this selection of works from the Sackler Gallery's collection. The distinctive decorations, which range from natural motifs to more abstract designs, are created using iron and cobalt pigments and platinum, gold, and silver enamels. Sculpture of South and Southeast Asia A group of 10th- to 13th-century Cambodian stone sculptures complements a display of Hindu stone, bronze, brass, and terra-cotta sculptures from South India dating from the 8th through the 14th century.