Anacostia Community Museum Archives
Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection Archive
National Air and Space Archives
National Anthropological Archives
National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
Research & Scholars Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Smithsonian Institution Archives
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Charles Lang Freer and two rickshaw men, Kyoto, 1895. Charles Lang Freer
Papers. Gift of the Estate of Charles Lang Freer. Photographer unidentified.
Freer
Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives
Room 2062
1050 Independence Ave SW
Washington, DC 20560
Mailing Address
Freer
Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives
P.O. Box 37012
Room 2062
MRC 707
Washington, DC 20013-7012
202.633.0533
202.357.4911 fax
www.asia.si.edu/reasearch/
archives.htm
Hours
Tuesday
– Thursday
10am to 5pm
Appointment Required
Metro Stop: Smithsonian
The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives is a manuscript repository dedicated to furthering the study of Asian art and culture and turn-of-the century American art represented in the Freer Gallery of Art. As part of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Archives' mission is to collect, preserve, and make available documentary materials that support the holdings and activities of the two galleries. Archives' staff arrange and describe collections for research use, create and maintain research tools, and publicize the collections in an effort to make these materials available to the staff of the two galleries, research scholars, students, and the general public.
Materials in the Archives are rich and diverse and include the personal and professional papers of preeminent art historians, archaeologists, artists, dealers, and collectors. The collections are also rich in photographs, ranging from rare salt prints of the 1850s to contemporary ilfochromes of the 1990s. Forming a treasure trove of raw material for analysis are letters, writings and journals, scrapbooks, clippings, drawings and sketchbooks, financial material, rubbings, and squeezes of inscriptions. The Archives houses over 140 collections, amounting to nearly 1,000 linear feet, with materials dating from the early nineteenth century to the present.
Highlights: Collections in the Archives include the papers of founder Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919); West Asian field records of archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld (1879-1948); a collection assembled by Myron Bement Smith (1897-1970) for the study of Islamic art and culture; and the papers of Freer staff member Carl Whiting Bishop (1881-1942) that chronicle his expeditions to China from 1923 to 1934. Significant documentation in the Freer Papers relates to James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), making the Archives a major repository for the study of that artist. Photographic holdings include glass-plate negatives of the Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908); Antoin Sevruguin's visual record of Qajar dynasty Iran; the Henry and Nancy Rosin Collection, an extraordinary assemblage of early photography of Japan; and The People of India, a series of photographic illustrations that formed one of the first major ethnographic studies produced by the camera.
The Archives' catalog records, electronic finding aids and digital holdings may be found at the Smithsonian Institution's Collections Search Center, available online to the public at http://collections.si.edu/search/.
Resources
Main Website
Finding Aids
Collection Descriptions
Main Image Gallery
Ernst Herzfeld Image Gallery
Samarra Resource Page
Smithsonian Collections Blog
Freer|Sackler Archives YouTube Channel