Mr. Platt's design for the building, 
beautiful in the simple distinction of 
its style, is also a model of sound plan¬ 
ning. There -will be only two floors. 
On the first the administrative offices, 
lecture hall, store rooms and* study 
rooms will be concentrated. Upstairs i 
the galleries are distributed, and de- j 
spite their elevation they will be placed 
around a garden court, a quiet sanc¬ 
tuary of turf and shrubbery, with a 
fountain in the centre open to the sky. 
These galleries will be so arranged 
that the visitor c^n leave any depart¬ 
ment in the scheme for the garden and 
not have to traverse another. If he 
has been absorbed in Chinese pottery, 
for example, and wants to go off and 
restfully think about it, he need not 
glance on his way at Egyptian glass or | 
American painting. He can give him¬ 
self up to a rnoei if he waata to. Fur¬ 
thermore, we will suppose that he 
wishes to give all his time, for days, 
perhaps, to jades or lacquers or etch¬ 
ings. In that case he may ensconce 
himself in one of the study rooms and 
there in solitude linger over his hobby 
as long as he likes under ideal condi¬ 
tions, handling object after object 
drawn from the metal receptacles in 
! which they are to be preserved, turn¬ 
ing them about in a perfect light on a 
roomy table. Mr. Freer is leaving no 
detail to chance in his preparations for 
this serious type of visitor. There will 
be a well provided library, and in 
charge of the whole institution a 
scholar absolutely qualified to give the 
inquirer the help he seeks. On this 
latter point there is to be no possibility 
! of failure. Mr. Freer will bequeath to 
the Smithsonian a sum of money the 
interest on which will be sufficient to 
pay such a salary as a first class man 
must have. There will be no opening 
for the amateur. The director of the 
museum will be an expert in the fullest 
sense of the term. 
His services will bear fruit. The 
museum will be a centre of scholarly 
labor. But imagination rests with spe¬ 
cial enjoyment on the thought of the 
shrine of sheer beauty which it prom¬ 
ises to be. The announcement of the 
forthcoming new building made by Dr. 
Charles D. Walcott, secretary of the 
Smithsonian, refers briefly to the wil¬ 
derness of treasure accumulated by Mr. 
Freer. The Oriental part of the col¬ 
lection, he notes, is illustrative of the 
development of art as originated in 
India and carried northward across 
China and into Japan. It comprises a 
series of more than 1,200 paintings in 
the form of screens, panels, kakemono, 
scrolls, etc.; nearly 1,700 specimens of 
pottery, over 300 bronzes and hundreds 
of stone sculptures, jades, lacquers, 
wood carvings and ivories. There are 
more than 600 examples of ancient 
Egyptian glass. There are early Per¬ 
sian and Indo-Persian paintings and 
there are ancient Biblical manuscripts. 
These Oriental objects constitute nu¬ 
merically the larger part of the collec¬ 
tion, and, indeed, it is as an Oriental 
collection that it will probably rank 
amongst the museums of the world. 
But to say this is in nowise to dis¬ 
parage the American wing. 
That, as has already been indicated, 
Mr. Freer considers as essentially at 
one with his representation of Eastern 
art, and his American group is of a , 
very strdng significance. It is com- 1 
posed of a few painters, Whistler con- I 
spicuous among them. Mr. Freer has ' 
62 of his oil paintings, 44 of his water j 
colors, 82 of his pastels and over 700 J 
drawings, sketches, etchings, litho-; 
graphs, etc. He has, besides, the fa¬ 
mous Peacock Room, and all its deco¬ 
rations, a souvenir of the painter which 
will be given a gallery by itself. There ’ 
are 86 examples of Thomas W. Dewing, 
12 of Abbott H. Thayer, 48 of D„ W, ( 
Tryon and 4 of Winslow Homer. The 
list of more than a hundred American 
paintings is completed by single works 
executed respectively by John 8. Sar¬ 
gent, John H. Twachtman, Childe Has- 
sam, Willard L. Metcalf, Gari Melcher3 
and James Lindon Smith. 'The last of 
Mr. Freer’s intentions, which I have 
here to record, has reference, to this 
American side of his collection, and it 
is, perhaps, as richly indicative as any 
or the spirit in which he is carrying j 
out a noble idea. I asked him if he i 
was going to hang every picture he! 
had. “Well,” he replied, “I'll tell you 
what I’m going to do. When the build- j 
.ing is all ready and the pictures are j 
there I’ll get Dewing, say, to come i 
down. His pictures will be hung as he , 
wants them hung, and those he doesn’t ; 
want hung will be put in the store -1 
rooms. If there are any ‘notes’ miss- ! 
ing he’ll supply them.” Was ever a ! 
museum called into being on a more 
liberal principle? Mr. Freer is working 
to make the thing riaht • His heart 
and soul are in it. To listen to him, 
and to see what he has already done, is 
to know that he will succeed. 
Home for Freer’s Art 
To Be Near White House 
■ Washington, Dec. 4.—A new million 
dollar building is to be added to the 
Smithsonian Institution here to con¬ 
tain the collection of paintings, en¬ 
gravings, porcelains and bronzes given 
to the institution from time to time 
by Charles L. Freer, of Detroit. Mr. 
Freer has given $1,000,000 to the in¬ 
stitution for the new building, plans 
for which now are being drawn. It 
will be located on the Smithsonian 
grounds In the Mall, which extends 
from the Capitol to the White House, 
and which contains the Washington 
Monument, the Botanical Gardens, the 
National Museum and other structures 
of national importance. 
Secretary Walcott of the Smith¬ 
sonian Institution announced to-day 
that plans had been so far perfected 
that It was expected work on the build¬ 
ing could be started during the coming 
spring. Construction of the principal 
art galleries of Europe and America 
has been under study for some time, 
and it is planned that the new building 
shall be arranged with the object of 
furnishing students of art the fullest 
opportunity for making use of its con¬ 
tents. 
Although the public halls will be ex¬ 
tensive, they will be planned with ref¬ 
erence to having only a part of the 
Freer collection on exhibition at one 
time. The collection represents periods 
of art beginning before the Christian 
era. 
It comprises early Persian and Ino- 
Persian. paints, more than 1,200 Chi¬ 
nese, Tibetan and Japanese screens, 
panels, kakemono and scrolls: nearly 
1,700 specimens of pottery from Ja¬ 
pan, China, Corea, Central and West¬ 
ern Asia and Egypt; more than 230 
bronzes from the same sources, and 
several hundred stone sculptures, wood 
carvings and ivories, etc., besides a j 
splendid representation of Chinese ! 
jades and more than 60 0 examples of i 
ancient Egyptian glass. 
The collection also contains valu¬ 
able ancient Biblical manuscripts ob¬ 
tained In Egypt. American artists will 
he represented by Whistler, Troyon, 
Dewing, Thayer, Homer, Sargent and 
others. 
