Art at the Freer Museum

One of my favorite things to do is to go to a museum. Living in the DMV we have access to so many museum and historical sites. The Smithsonian campus has many amazing museums and galleries. The Freer is one of my favorite. The exhibition are always completely captivating and dominate the majority of the space with extensive works of art in each themed exhibition.  The current shows are definitely worth  your time seeing if you are in the DC area.

Chinese  Exhibition:

Old Tales Retold: Chinese Narrative Painting

April 20–October 20, 2013
Freer Gallery of Art

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Twenty-three paintings relay lively stories about famous people and events in Chinese history. The primary intent behind many of the paintings was to promote certain Confucian moral principles and ideals. Consequently, these works often focus on individuals who exhibited positive character traits in their lives, such as humility, loyalty, studiousness, or dedication to the greater good, and who are recognized as paragons of virtue or exemplars of ethical behavior. Along the way, viewers meet emperors and kings, officials, scholars, philosophers, and sages, and become acquainted with the particular incidents, acts, or encounters that illustrate their especially admired personal qualities. Many of the stories present unexpected insights into both the particular values espoused by traditional Chinese culture and the universality of human experience.http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/old-tales-retold.asp

 

 

Whistler’s Neighborhood: Impressions of a Changing London

September 8, 2012–September 8, 2013
Freer Gallery of Art

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) lived in London’s Chelsea neighborhood from 1863 until his death. Bordering the River Thames, Chelsea was home to artists, aristocrats, tradesmen, and paupers. Whistler depicted the storefronts and street life outside his door and captured a section of the city that was undergoing a dramatic transformation in the 1880s. Historic buildings were razed and replaced with mansions for the upper class, forcing the poor into squalid conditions. The Thames Embankment, a major public works project designed to improve river navigation and provide underground sewers, changed the topography of Chelsea by claiming much of the riverbank for public gardens and new residential buildings.

The diminutive etchings in Whistler’s Neighborhood: Impressions of a Changing London, which also features watercolors and small oil paintings, underscore the immediacy of the artist’s quick impressions of his evolving neighborhood. Together, the works form a panorama of Chelsea in the 1880s.

 

Abbott Thayer: The Nature of Art

Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921), is recognized today for his ethereal angels, portraits of women and children, landscapes, and delicate flower paintings. A New Englander who expressed the spiritual in much of his work, he was known as a "soul painter." In his own time, his work was praised by critics even as it was popular with the public and sought after by collectors.

 

 

I really enjoyed the beauty of his work. I had studied his art in college but actually stand under  Virgin Enthroned 1891 oil was awesome.

“Thayer used his children—Mary in the center, Gerald and Gladys at her sides—as models for this painting. Its composition is based on the Renaissance type called a "sacred conversation," in which donors and saints are depicted on either side of the Virgin Mary. Contemporary critics hailed it as a masterpiece of religious painting; few understood that the painting represented Thayer's children.”

This show was everything art should be and more!

 

General

Freer Gallery of Art / Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
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