iNational Museum of Asian ArtNational Mall
A Museum in the Making
How Charles Lang Freer used his Detroit home as a proving ground for what became the first national art museum of the United States.
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On Ferry Avenue in Detroit, among Gilded Age mansions, Charles Lang Freer built a house that favoured "harmony, simplicity and repose" and used its rooms to test how art should be shown. The house still stands, and a video in this show walks you through it.
Freer took what he learned there to the museum he founded: small galleries joined by arched doorways and lit by leaded-glass skylights. Gallery 8, where the show hangs, is one of those rooms, so part of the argument is the building around you. Alongside are paintings by Whistler, Dwight William Tryon and Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Pewabic pottery from Detroit, and ceramics from China, Japan and Syria, each paired with the story of how Freer bought and displayed it.
It is a show about the building as much as the art in it. Admission is free with no tickets, it is in the West Building (the Freer), and the museum is open daily 10am to 5:30pm, closed 25 December.
Look for
The Freer House video walkthrough
A video takes you through Freer's house on Ferry Avenue in Detroit, which still stands, room by room where he first tried out how to hang his collection.
Pewabic pottery
Look for pots from Pewabic, the Detroit studio founded by Mary Chase Perry Stratton, a friend whose taste shaped Freer's own.
Ceramics from Freer's home
Chinese, Japanese and Syrian ceramics of the kind Freer kept in his living quarters, each shown with the story of how he bought and displayed it.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Nerding Out
- Rainy Days
Skip if
You've come for Asian art alone: much of this show is American painting and Freer's Detroit house.
Also at National Museum of Asian Art
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
9
- A Museum in the MakingAndrew Jameson / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution
- Adam Pendleton: Love, QueenPeio Erroteta / Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution
- Light Is a Plastic Medium: The Photography of Carlotta CorpronCourtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- National Museum of Asian ArtDifference engine, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture GardenGryffindor, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- National Museum of Natural Historyajay_suresh via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- National Museum of American HistoryCarol M. Highsmith / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- International Spy MuseumFarragutful, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0