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
Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum
National Air and Space Archives
National Anthropological Archives
National Museum of the American Indian Archives
Peale Family Papers, National Portrait Gallery
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
Smithsonian American Art Museum Slide and Photo Archives
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Smithsonian Institution Archives
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Smithsonian Photographic Services
Affiliated Organization: National Gallery of Art
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
202.633.0533
202.357.4911 fax
AVRref@asia.si.edu
www.asia.si.edu/visitor/
archives.htm
Hours
Monday
– Thursday
10am to 5pm
Appointment Required
Transportation
and
directions can be found at:
smithsonian.org/visit/
infocenter/travel.htm
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. Photogaphic
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 and electronic finding aids may be found
in the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS), available
on-line to the public at www.siris.si.edu.
As a member of the Research Libraries Group (www.rlg.org),
the Archives also makes its catalog records available in RLG's union catalog,
and its electronic finding aids available in RLG's Archival Resources
database.