36 



Annals of the Smithsonian Institution 2000 



interest in the staff was much valued. She will indeed be 

 missed. 



Membership and Special Events 



With the black-tie benefit dinner held on April 27, the gal- 

 leries initiated what will be an annual gala event to raise 

 funds for programs and exhibitions as well as strengthen our 

 ties to the community. This year's gala, which inaugurated 

 the exhibition "Music in the Age of Confucius," raised more 

 than $205,000 from supporters, including The Washington 

 Post Company, Mr. and Mrs. Michael R. Sonnenreich, and 

 Toyota. The 274 guests, who were the first to see the show, 

 were summoned to dinner by a Chinese musician playing a 

 drum on display in the exhibition. A Washington reporter 

 called the event a "stunning feast for the senses" and we were 

 pleased to have honored guests such as architect I. M. Pei 

 and the Chinese and Japanese ambassadors join the largest 

 seated dinner ever served in the Freer. The gala was superbly 

 organized by cochairmen Cynthia Helms and Eden Raf- 

 shoon, while cellist Yo-Yo Ma served as honorary chairman. 



This year we were pleased to welcome to the Friends of 

 the Freer and Sackler Galleries a number of new corporate 

 donors who became members as a result of their support of 

 the gala. In fiscal year 2000, we experienced a 37 percent 

 growth in overall membership from the previous year. The 

 galleries' ability to produce quality programs that enrich the 

 general museum experience for each and every museum visi- 

 tor is strengthened by the support of the Friends of the Freer 

 and Sackler Galleries, and our future looks promising due to 

 our broadening membership base. 



Friends' contributions to underwrite acquisitions raised 

 $354,943 this year. This enabled the Freer to acquire the 

 fourteenth-century White Avalokiteshvara, a wooden bodhi- 

 sattva from Nepal, at the member's annual black-tie dinner 

 held on June 10. Through generous pledges made through- 

 out the evening, we were also able to raise an additional 

 $231,000 towards acquisitions. This festive occasion drew 

 190 people, the largest attendance for a Friends dinner to 

 date. Prior to the evening activities, members participated in 

 a day-long program consisting of behind-the-scenes tours 

 and a lecture by architectural historian and author Elizabeth 

 B. Moynihan on her work at the Mahtab Bagh, a garden lo- 

 cated at the Taj Majal. 



Exhibitions 



Fiscal year 2000 brought a variety of exhibitions to the Freer 

 and Sackler that featured both contemporary and ancient 

 works of art from the collections and on loan. Exhibitions 

 were critically applauded by the press and brought in a wide 

 range of visitors of different ages and backgrounds. 



In October 1999, the traditions of royal life and death in 

 Mesopotamia nearly five thousand years ago were explored 

 in the exhibition "Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur" 

 (October 17, 1999-January 17, 2000). This spectacular ex- 

 hibition featured jewelry in gold and semiprecious stones, 

 ancient musical instruments, tools and weapons in precious 



metals, and cylinder seals depicting royal celebrations and 

 rituals. The exhibition attracted more than 3000 visitors on 

 its opening day and a total of over 140,000 visitors during 

 its three-month run at the Sackler. 



Several other Sackler exhibitions this year offered a diverse 

 look at the art and culture of Asia. Three exhibitions featur- 

 ing works from the Islamic world, "Constructing Identities: 

 Recent Works by Jananne al-Ani" (November 21, 1999- 

 February 28, 2000), "Antoin Sevruguin and the Persian 

 Image" (November 21, 1999-May 28, 2000), and "Imaging 

 the Word: Selections of Calligraphy from the Islamic World" 

 (November 17, 1999-May 7, 2000), gave visitors a fresh, 

 multifaceted view of the Near East. "Constructing Identi- 

 ties" was the gallery's first presentation of contemporary 

 works by an artist from the Islamic world. The exhibition 

 featured large-format photographs, transparencies, and a 

 slide show by Iraqi artist Jananne al-Ani (born 1966). 

 "Antoin Sevruguin and the Persian Image" included 50 

 photographs of rulers, courtiers, commoners, and daily life in 

 Iran from the late 1870s to the 1930s. "Imaging the Word" 

 featured 30 works on paper and parchment, textiles, coins, 

 gemstones, metalwork, and wood dating from the ninth cen- 

 tury to the present. 



The Sackler Gallery exhibition "Music in the Age of Con- 

 fucius" (April 30-September 17, 2000), featured a rare set of 

 36 bells, chime stones, zithers, flutes, drums, and panpipes 

 that represents the largest and best-preserved cache of an- 

 cient musical instruments ever discovered. The exhibition 

 marked the first time the instruments were shown together 

 outside China; the majority of the instruments were on loan 

 from the Hubei Provincial Museum in central China. 



"The Heroic Past: The Persian Book of Kings" (June 4— 

 October 29, 2000) presented 38 works of art that include 

 lavishly illustrated manuscripts as well as tiles, glazed 

 ceramic vessels, coins, and other objects in silver and gold. 

 Centered on the Shahnama (the Persian Book of Kings), this 

 exhibition drew on two of the museum's richest collections: 

 metalwork of the Sasanian period (22—650) and Persian arts 

 of the book. The show examined how ancient Iranian myths, 

 legends, and history were combined to create the most pow- 

 erful literary and visual expression of kingship in Iran. 



Also in June 2000, the Sackler Gallery housed the first ex- 

 hibition to analyze the use of Russo-Japanese War prints as 

 propaganda devices. Twenty-nine woodblock prints by 

 Japanese artists and nine gouache drawings by British illus- 

 trators were placed on view in the exhibition "A Well- 

 Watched War: Images from the Russo-Japanese Front 1904— 

 1905" (June 4-October 29, 2000). These dramatically 

 graphic, action-filled images — published in contemporane- 

 ous magazines and books — focused on themes of individual 

 heroism and compassion and also depicted scenes from the 

 Japanese home front. 



The Nuhad Es-Said Collection, arguably the finest collec- 

 tion of Islamic metalwork in private hands, went on view for 

 the first time in the United States in the Sackler exhibition 

 "Fountains of Light: Islamic Metalwork from the Nuhad 

 Es-Said Collection." The long-term exhibition, which 

 opened in mid-September 2000 and will be exhibited for at 



