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T3 
OPENING OF THE FREER GALLERY OF ART 
By Harvey M. Watts 
T HE first week in May was made 
notable in Washington in that 
the long delayed official opening 
of the Freer Gallery of Art, as the col¬ 
lection given by the late Charles Lang 
Freer of Detroit to the nation is now 
called, took place. In a way the open¬ 
ing marks a new epoch in the history of 
American museums and the public is, 
in a partial sense, now in the enjoy¬ 
ment of one of the most extraordinary 
collections of art known anywhere. 
The long and unnecessary mystery with 
which the completion of the galleries 
and the installation of the art objects 
was invested naturally tended to give 
an extrinsic interest to the official 
opening but, as events turned out, 
nothing quite so casual in the way of 
openings or of anniversary celebrations 
of American museums has ever been 
experienced before by those who were 
the guests of the occasion on May ist 
and the week that followed. 
For, practically, the Freer collection, 
as it were, announced itself without 
explanation, since the inconsequential 
leaflet which those in charge of the gal¬ 
lery got out gave the barest of informa¬ 
tion in regard to the priceless nature of 
the collection as a whole, to say nothing 
of pointing out what are its most sig¬ 
nificant features. And this is all the 
more necessary in the case of a highly 
specialized collection such as the Freer 
collection is, since it is not made up of 
the kind of art that immediately ex¬ 
plains itself to the public as do the great 
galleries of paintings and sculpture of 
the great European periods such as the 
Frick, the Altman, the Widener, the 
Huntington, the McFadden, as well as 
the general collections of European and 
American art in the numerous museums 
the country over, now such a feature 
and a factor in our cultural life. 
Whether any series of booklets or 
brochures or of special pamphlets deal¬ 
ing with certain phases of the Freer 
collection are contemplated has not 
been made clear; nor is there any sign 
that those in charge of the collection 
feel they have any such obligation to 
the public, though the obligation is a 
very real one and the meeting of it, or 
the failure to meet it, is a test that the 
Freer gallery management will have to 
face sooner or later. The only obliga¬ 
tion that is realized is that the collec¬ 
tion on the walls and the objects in 
storage are to be put at the command 
of students under conditions which it is 
presumed will allow the students the 
freest of opportunities and a sym¬ 
pathetic relationship. Seemingly it 
was, and is, assumed that the public 
has no right to expect to be taken into 
leading strings and those who wandered 
through the gallery at the opening un¬ 
received and apparently unwelcomed, 
though invited, and those who will 
wander through the gallery from now 
on also presumably are expected to 
work out their own salvation with the 
aid of such succinct labels, reduced to 
the unobtrusive laconicism of a few 
words, as have been applied to pic¬ 
tures and pottery, to sculpture and to 
bronzes. 
There is nothing, therefore, in the 
immediate aspect of the galleries as 
revealed to the public that indicates 
that the Freer Gallery of Art is that 
kind of a new museum which it was 
hoped it would be, carrying more 
resourcefully out the idea which is 
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