Reports of the Museums and Research Institutes 



17 



anniversary of the Freer Gallery of Art, which began in 1998 

 and concluded this year. 



In 1996 the galleries could not have predicted the benefits 

 that would emerge from these observances. The anniversaries 

 and accompanying publicity brought unprecedented and 

 continuing public attention to the galleries. Increased no- 

 tices attracted new circles of visitors, scholars, friends, and 

 supporters. Now acknowledged together as the national mu- 

 seum of Asian art, the Freer and Sackler galleries with their 

 separate yet complementary collections are increasingly 

 known and appreciated as an exceptional international re- 

 source for scholarship, publication, and exhibition. 



Recognition also took the form of magnificent gifts of art. 

 The Dr. Paul Singer Collection of Chinese Art of the Arthur 

 M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, was a joint gift 

 of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, Paul Singer, the AMS 

 Foundation for Arts, Sciences, and Humanities, and the 

 Children of Arthur M. Sackler. The collection includes some 

 5,000 works — in jade, bronze, ceramic, ivory, wood and 

 other materials — dating from the fourth millennium B.C. to 

 the twentieth century. 



Of particular interest is a group of objects that Dr. Singer 

 assembled from the state of Chu in southern China. Archaeo- 

 logical discoveries have given the formerly obscure Chu 

 culture new status as one of the most exciting research topics 

 in the field of ancient Chinese art history. Thomas Lawton, 

 director emeritus, is spearheading the effort to publish and 

 exhibit this extraordinary collection. 



Three important awards brought recognition to friends of 

 the galleries this year. Ikuo Hirayama, president of the Japan 

 Art Institute, Tokyo, was inducted into the Order of James 

 Smithson for his contributions totaling $11 million to the 

 Freer and Sackler galleries. The Order of James Smithson is 

 the highest honor the Smithsonian Institution can bestow. 

 Professor Hirayama's induction ceremony was capped by an- 

 nouncement of his gift of $2.5 million to fund a major 

 program for the care of Japanese painting in the galleries' 

 department of conservation and scientific research. 



The second award, the Charles Lang Freer Medal, was pre- 

 sented to Sherman Lee for his lifelong commitment to 

 connoisseurship. Dr. Lee has enriched the studies in a wide 

 range of artistic traditions in Asian countries: Buddhist art, 

 Chinese painting, and the arts of Japan, India, Southeast 

 Asia, and the Himalayan kingdoms, among others. The im- 

 pact of his exrensive publications has been augmented and 

 broadened by frequent, often ground-breaking exhibitions 

 and by a dazzling series of acquisitions he has made for vari- 

 ous museums. Intended to honor a scholar of truly 

 extraordinary distinction, the Freer Medal celebrates Dr. 

 Lee's career and extraordinary achievements. 



The third award, the biennial Shimada Prize for distin- 

 guished scholarship in the history of Asian art, was 

 presented to the Japanese art historian Toshie Kihara, who 

 is also an official of Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs. 

 Kihara was selected from a group of 2 1 nominees for her 

 two-volume treatise on the Japanese painter KanoTan'yu 

 (1602— 1674), whom art historians regard as the most signif- 

 icant painter of the early Edo period (1615-1716). Kihara's 



publication in Japanese — Yubi no tankyu: Kano Tan'yu ron 

 (The Search for Profound Delicacy: the Art Of Kano Tany'yu), 

 (Osaka, Japan, Osaka Daigaku Shuppanki, 1998) — is the 

 first critical scholarly work to interpret Tany'yu's major 

 contributions to the history of art in Japan. The award car- 

 ries a $10,000 prize and is presented jointly by the Freer 

 and Sackler galleries and the Metropolitan Center for Far 

 Eastern Art in Kyoto, Japan, for the best research publica- 

 tion in the field. 



Development Activities 



Support for the galleries acquisitions and programs has grown 

 tremendously through our 300-member group, Friends of the 

 Freer and Sackler Galleries. In fiscal year 1999 there was a 17 

 percent growth in membership, and approximately $329,000 

 was raised from Friends memberships, an increase of 20 per- 

 cent over fiscal year 1998. The galleries are grateful to the 

 Friends for their immense generosity to the Friends Purchase 

 Fund, which in 1999 enabled the museum to purchase two 

 works of art at the April 17, 1999, annual dinner: Bhairava, a 

 fifteenth-sixteenth century Nepalese gilt copper repoussee 

 sculpture and The Five Sacred Festivals, a set of hanging scrolls 

 by Ikeda Koson, painted in ink and color on silk, ca. 1830. 

 Additionally, special contributions to the fund from members 

 and participants on the Friends spring trip to Iran added a 

 third object to the permanent collections: a blue-and-white 

 ceramic plate, which is from the Timurid dynasty (ca. second 

 half of the fifteenth century) and associated with the city of 

 Nishapur in northeastern Iran. 



Exhibitions 



Anniversary festivities came to a festive climax with the six- 

 month run of the exhibition and associated activities for 

 "Devi: The Great Goddess," March 28-September 6, 1999. 

 Devi, as she is commonly known in South Asia, is among the 

 three most important deities of Hinduism, and yet this 

 year's exhibition was the first major museum exploration of 

 her role and her many manifestations. Complementing the 

 galleries' strong holdings in Indian paintings, the works bor- 

 rowed for this exhibition from collections in Europe and the 

 United States included a wealth of sculpture. Images of the 

 goddess came from many regions of South Asia and richly 

 represented the diversity of her forms and identities. 



Several other Sackler exhibitions this year offered richly 

 varied stylistic and thematic interpretations of the land, 

 peoples, and monuments of South Asia. Visitors had oppor- 

 tunities to compare the work by both indigenous artists and 

 foreigners recording their impressions of the land. One exhi- 

 bition, "The Jesuits and the Grand Mughal: Renaissance Art 

 at the Imperial Court of India 15 80-1 630," September 27, 

 1998-April 4, 1999, for example, examined the enduring ef- 

 fects of cultural exchange between Jesuit missionaries from 

 Europe and the Mughal emperors of northern India. Another 

 small exhibition, April 25-July 18, 1999, focused on the 

 work of a single Indian artist, Nainsukh of Guler (ca. 17 10— 

 1778). Because many of Nainsukh 's paintings were created 



