Art, culture & history images

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, collectively known as the Freer-Sackler, form the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Asian Art.  The Freer-Sackler Galleries are reknowned for their preeminent Asian art collection, unrivaled in the U.S.

Charles Lang Freer began collecting American art in the 1880s. It was the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler, whom he met in 1890 and who was strongly influenced by Japanese prints and Chinese ceramics that persuaded him to start collecting Asian art. Now, the Freer-Sackler holds an exhaustive collection of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, South and Southeast Asian art and artifacts.