582 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



provided in which contributions can be cared for adequately, and 

 exhibited to the public in the manner they deserve, many collectors 

 seeking a permanent home for their treasures will welcome the op- 

 portunity of placing them in the custody of a national institution. 

 The providing of a suitable building for the gallery is all that is 

 necessary to make Washington in the years to come an art center 

 fully worthy of the Nation. 



THE FREER GALLERY OF ART 



The collections installed in the Freer Gallery of Art were brought 

 together by Charles Lang Freer, of Detroit, Mich. They represent 

 the results of JSIr. Freer's personal studj^ and acquisition over a 

 period of about 35 years, the earliest of his purchases incorporated 

 in the collections dating from the later eighties. 



During the administration of President Roosevelt, these collections 

 were presented by Mr. Freer to the Nation, with the understanding 

 that they should be placed under the direction of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, and on May 5, 1906, the formal deed of gift to the 

 Smithsonian was executed. 



The building in which the collections are now installed was given 

 also by Mr. Freer, who requested that it be used exclusively for his 

 collections. In accepting this gift, the Government agreed to care 

 for and maintain the building and collections at the public expense, 

 although in addition to these provisions, Mr. Freer created an en- 

 dowment, the income from which was to be used for certain specified 

 activities and developments which he wished to have carried on 

 after his death independently, if need be, of congressional appro- 

 priations. It was, furthermore, his expressed desire that his gift 

 should become a unit of the National Gallery of Art which he hoped 

 would be erected in Washington in the near future, and to which he 

 felt confident additional units would be given by other collectors 

 who might think, as he did, that such a foundation at Washington, 

 under the control and direction of the Government, would mean the 

 development of an important center for cultural research in both 

 art and science. 



Mr. Freer was convinced that the more nearly a cultural object 

 of any civilization expresses the underlying principles of artistic 

 production in soundness of thought and workmanship, the more 

 nearly it takes its place witli other objects of equally high quality 

 produced by any other civilization; and with that in view, he was 

 intent upon bringing together such expressions of western and east- 

 ern cultures as seemed to him to embody at their best those char- 

 acteristics which he believed to be inherent in all works of art. 



From the West, he acquired principally American paintings by 

 men, inheritors of European traditions, in whose work he found 



