Report on the Freer Gallery of Art 



Sir : I have the honor to submit the 42d annual report of the Freer 

 Gallery of Art, for the year ended June 30, 1962. 



Arcliibald Gibson Wenley, second director of the Freer Gallery of 

 Art, died on February 17, 1962, He was born May 5, 1898, in Ann 

 Arbor, Mich., and graduated from the University of Michigan in 

 1921, and the Library School of the New York Public Library in 

 1923. In that same year, Mr. Wenley joined the staff of the Freer 

 Gallery as a trainee sinologist, and participated in the archeological 

 surveys conducted in China under the joint sponsorsliip of the 

 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Freer Gallery. He studied 

 under Freer auspices in Paris for 3 years at the ficole des Langues 

 Orientales Vivantes and the Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises; 

 and in Kyoto, Japan, for 2 years. 



Mr. Wenley formally joined the staff of the Freer Gallery in 1931 

 as associate in research. He possessed a firm fomidation in the lan- 

 guages, history, and culture of China and Japan; and, when John 

 Ellerton Lodge, the first director of the Freer Gallery, died in Decem- 

 ber 1942, Mr. Wenley was appointed as director. He served on nmner- 

 ous committees through the years, including the Smithsonian Art 

 Commission; member of the Board of United States Civil Service 

 Examiners at Washington, D.C., for the Smithsonian Institution; 

 member, the Visiting Committee, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library 

 and Collection; research professor of Oriental art. University of 

 Michigan ; trustee, Textile Museum of the District of Columbia ; trus- 

 tee. Hermitage Foundation, Norfolk, Va.; chainnan of the Louise 

 Wallace Hackney Scholarship Committee of the American Oriental 

 Society; president. Cosmos Club; and chairman, American Commit- 

 tee for the Japanese Government Loan Exhibition, 1953. 



Archibald Wenley was a distinguished scholar and was particularly 

 known for his contributions to the study of archaic Chinese bronzes. 

 He contributed articles and reviews to many journals, and in 1916, 

 in collaboration with Dr. John A. Pope, who now succeeds him as 

 director, published A Descri/ptive and Illustrative Catalogue of 

 Chinese Bronzes Acquired during the Administration of John Eller- 

 ton Lodge. In 1943 he brought the Freer Fellowship program with 

 the University of Michigan into reality and expanded the research 

 facilities and publication programs of the Gallery. One result was 

 the inauguration of the monograph series Ars Orientalis^ a scholarly 

 quarto journal of the arts of Islam and the East published jointly 



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