In the 1370s, the charismatic but brutal Turkic warlord Timur, also known as Tamerlane in the West, swept out of Central Asia and conquered a vast territory that extended from Anatolia—in present-day Turkey—to the borders of China. He chose Samarqand—in present-day Uzbekistan—as his capital and established the Timurid dynasty, which reigned until 1506. Although the Timurids lost political control over much of their conquered lands by the middle of the 15th century, they were responsible for one of the most artistically brilliant periods in the history of the Islamic world.

Fifteenth-century arts of the book reached an apogee during the relatively peaceful reign of the last Timurid ruler, Sultan Husayn Mirza (1470–1506), whose capital Herat—in present-day Afghanistan—became the unrivaled artistic and literary center of West Asia. Among the most important artists in Herat was Kamal-uddin Bihzad (d. 1535), largely accredited with introducing a new sense of naturalism into Persian painting. Bihzad signed few works and because of his legendary status, numerous compositions have been erroneously attributed to him. The Freer and Sackler galleries have the largest collection of paintings by Bihzad in the United States, which were on view together for the first time: a signed painting, believed to be one of the artist's last, "An Old Man and a Youth," and two other compositions attributed to his hand, "Sa'di and the Youth of Kashgar" and "Abduction by Sea."

Asian Games: The Art of Contest
February 26–May 15, 2005
Using boards, pieces, and other game-playing paraphernalia as well as paintings, prints, and decorative arts that depict people playing games, Asian Games: The Art of Contest explores the role of games as social and cultural activities in the diverse societies of pre-modern Asia. It also highlights the paramount importance of Asia as a source of many games—chess, backgammon, Parcheesi, Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, and playing cards, not to mention polo and field hockey—now played in the West. In addition to games familiar to Western audiences, the exhibition also examines the Japanese shell-matching game (kai-oi) and incense competition (jishu-ko).

Drawing on major collections of Asian art in the United States, Europe, and Japan, Asian Games comprises approximately two hundred objects, including spectacular examples of games sets dating from the twelfth to nineteenth centuries; Persian and Indian court paintings and illuminated manuscripts of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries; and Chinese and Japanese scroll paintings, screens, ceramics, and decorative arts. It also features a game room where visitors can play some of the major board games addressed in the exhibition, including chess, backgammon, weiqi (go in Japan), and pachisi. For the first time at the museum, labels written with younger visitors in mind accompany selected objects.

Asian Games: The Art of Contest is organized by the Asia Society, New York. Major support was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by United Airlines. Funding for the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery presentation has been provided by the Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries, with additional support from Glenna and David Osnos and H. Christopher Luce and Tina Liu. Media sponsor is Washington Parent magazine.

Visit the Asian Games interactive.

Boating on a River
February 12–August 21, 2005
Inspired by the 600-year anniversary of Zheng He's construction of the massive Chinese "treasure fleet" and his seven seafaring expeditions, spanning twenty-eight years (1405–1433) in the early Ming period, "Boating on a River" surveyed the role of boats in later Chinese painting history. This thematic rotation contained twenty-eight works of Chinese painting and calligraphy spanning the 12th to the 20th centuries. Included were pieces conveying well-known scenes from Chinese literature, such as the mystical Nymph of the Luo River, the melancholy Lute Song, and the philosophical Red Cliff, among several others. Also included in the rotation were works depicting scholars and fishermen's daily lives relating to boats, genre scenes with depiction of boats, and a section devoted to the canopied boats of a gentry class. In the East Corridor, a lovely Ming dynasty handscroll, depicting various kinds of fish, flanked by two fish-themed works of calligraphy, was also on display.



Iraq and China: Ceramics, Trade, and Innovation
December 4, 2004–July 17, 2005
This exhibition focuses on revolutionary and enduring changes that took place in Iraqi ceramics during the 9th century as the humble character of Islamic pottery responded to a wave of luxury Chinese goods, imported by Arab and Persian merchants. During this period, Iraq became a center for Islamic ceramic production as new technologies transformed common earthenware into a vehicle for complex multi-colored designs. Chinese ceramics were admired in Iraq for their shiny white surfaces and hard body. As neither the essential raw materials nor the appropriate firing technology were locally available, Islamic potters therefore created their own versions by covering finely potted yellow clay hemispherical bowls with a glaze that turned opaque after firing, creating ceramics that were described as "pearl cups like the moon." This technique offered the potters an ideal canvas for bold decorative designs, first in cobalt blue and then with "luster"; mixtures of copper and silver that were painted onto the glaze then fixed in a second firing.

Following the gradual disintegration of the Abbasid Empire after the 10th century, migrating Iraqi potters transmitted these techniques to Egypt and Iran from whence they traveled to Europe, giving rise to the great "Majolica" tradition in medieval Spain and Renaissance Italy. In China, 14th-century experiments with cobalt blue from the Islamic world led to Yuan and Ming blue-and-white.

Dream Worlds: Modern Japanese Prints and Paintings from the Robert O. Muller Collection
November 6, 2004–January 2, 2005
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
In the spring of 2003, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery received a bequest of more than 4,500 woodblock prints, representing 240 artists, from the world-renowned Robert O. Muller Collection of Japanese prints. Muller (1911–2003) was a Connecticut-based collector who over the course of seventy years had assembled one of the world's finest collections of Japanese prints from the late 1860s through the 1940s. This exhibition presented approximately 150 of these prints in a series of thematic categories that had particular resonance with Muller: the rendering of light in various atmospheric conditions; depictions of birds and beasts; theatricality, whether specific to the Japanese stage or in the more general sense of, narrative style; images of female beauty; and, printing technique in the service of effect. The prints were complemented by some paintings also drawn from Muller's holdings.

Muller collected in two distinct yet related areas. The first included the eclectic style of print that emerged in the last quarter of the 19th century—an era of experimentation that produced such diverse talents as Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–92), who was famed for his flamboyant treatments of legend and historical events, and Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847–1915), whose studies in light and shadow were offered as an aesthetic alternative to the photograph. The second area of the Muller's collection comprises the world's most important grouping of prints created in the shin-hanga (new print) style. Shin-hanga was an entrepreneurial creation of the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo in the first decade of the 20th century. Watanabe managed a coterie of designer/artists who adapted traditional, idealized print subjects—theater, the pleasure quarters, bird and flower and landscape—to modern tastes. Included in the collection are superb representations of female beauty by Ito Shinsui (1898–1972), camp and vamping kabuki actors in male and female roles presented in exceptional designs by Yoshikawa Kanpo (1894–1979) and Natori Shunsen (1886–1960), the romanticized country and city views of Kawase Hasui (1883–1957) and numerous bird studies by Ohara Koson (1877–1945).

View the Dream Worlds online interactive.

Cai Guo-Qiang — "Traveler: Reflection"
October 30, 2004–April 24, 2005
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
"Traveler" by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang is a two-part installation at the Sackler and the nearby Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Best known for his grand explosion events as well as for his ability to layer poetic allegory and historical resonance, Cai Guo-Qiang is one of the most significant artists to have emerged in the last decade. "Reflection," at the Sackler, is a site-specific installation that invites visitors to ponder the interactions between past and present cultures as well as their relocation within a museum that is dedicated to the preservation of the past. The installation places the weathered hull of a 50-foot long Japanese fishing boat, excavated off the coast of Japan, upon an imaginary ocean of gleaming porcelain fragments of deities from Dehua, China. "Reflection's" monumental arcs and delicately-realized sculptures represent multiple layers of meaning that on one level resonate with a concurrent Sackler exhibition - "China and Iraq" which explores the transformative effect of a wave of imported luxury Chinese goods on 9th-century Iraqi ceramics, while also demonstrating the potential of artistically enriching cultural interactions. Cai links "Reflection" to the installation at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden where "Unlucky Year: Unrealized Projects from 2003-2004" features a selection of the artist's signature gunpowder drawings. These are tangible visualizations of ambitious projects using large-scale explosives that the artist sought to realize at high profile sites.

View the Cai Guo-Qiang—Traveler online interactive.

Asia in America: Views of Chinese Art from the Indianapolis Museum of Art
September 18, 2004–March 20, 2005
In the fall of 2004, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery opened a series of exhibitions showcasing works from outstanding museums of Asian art throughout the United States. The series, entitled "Asia in America," began with selections of Chinese art from the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). Founded in 1883, the IMA is among the largest general art museums in the United States, and has a long history of collecting Asian art. Among the IMA's earlier Asian acquisitions were several works given by Charles Lang Freer, founder of the Freer Gallery of Art. Through the years, the IMA and the Freer Gallery have often acquired similar items. The complementary character of these two collections was the basis for many of the exhibition's selections, which include some of the finest Chinese art ever made.

The exhibition was designed to engage both beginning and more experienced viewers. A gift from Charles Lang Freer to the IMA flanked the doorway to the first room, which featured related objects from both institutions. These included seven ceramic treasures from the IMA—spanning more than 1,000 years of history—juxtaposed with similar items from the Freer and neighboring Sackler Gallery, revealing how different apparently "similar" things can be.

In addition, 40 bronze, ceramic, cloisonné, jade and wood items from the IMA's rich collection, spanning over 4,000 years from the Neolithic period to the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), allowed visitors to appreciate the effects of aesthetic, chronological and geographic variations, as well as the impact of cultural continuity and tradition on design.

Young Whistler: Early Prints and the French Set
August 28, 2004–March 13, 2005
James McNeill Whistler learned to make prints in 1857, two years after he had moved to Paris to study painting. In October 1858, he published twelve of his most accomplished early prints in a slim portfolio that has come to be known as the "French Set." Whistler became famous as a fierce adherent of art for art's sake, but as a young artist he was most influenced by contemporary realist painters such as Gustave Courbet, and many of his early prints are realistic scenes of working-class life in Paris and rural France.

Drawing on the Freer Gallery of Art's unparalleled collection of Whistler's work, Young Whistler showcases early impressions of the most important etchings that Whistler produced up to 1858, including examples of every print from the "French Set" and numerous rarities such as the only known impression of "A Youth Wearing a German Cap." In addition to 23 etchings, the exhibition will include related drawings and watercolors, as well as some of the artist's tools, including five of his copper printing plates.

Visit the James McNeill Whistler interactive.

Art of Mughal India
August 21, 2004–February 21, 2005
Art of Mughal India" presented some 30 works of art, including brilliantly colored, intricately detailed manuscript paintings and luxury objects in jade and lacquered wood, that offer a glimpse into the conceptually creative and technically innovative tradition of Mughal painting and its lasting impact on the courts of Rajput India and Safavid Iran. In the early 16th century, the conquest of northern India by Babur (reigned 1526–1530) ushered in one of the most remarkable political, cultural and artistic periods in the history of the subcontinent. Babur was a direct descendent of the Mongol conqueror Ghenghiz Khan (d. 1227), and the Turkic warlord Timur, who had established the Timurid dynasty in Iran and Central Asia (1370–1501). Babur and his successors were known as the "Mughals," a derivation of the word "Mongol," and ruled over India until 1858. The wealth and opulence of their courts so impressed foreign visitors that the term "mogul" entered the English language as a synonym for power and wealth. Like their Timurid ancestors, the Mughals expressed deep interest in the arts of the book, but it was only after Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) succeeded in consolidating Mughal power in north India that a distinct artistic tradition began to emerge. With the help of Persian painters, who migrated to India at the invitation of Akbar's father, the second Mughal ruler Humayun (d. 1555), early Mughal painting synthesized the refinement of Persian painting and the dynamism of Hindu compositions with Western naturalism. Akbar's wide-ranging interests encouraged the extensive production of illustrated Hindu and Muslim epics, historical narratives and portraiture.

Akbar's son Jahangir (reigned 1605–1627) was more interested in highly finished individual compositions and portrait studies, drawing on both Persian pictorial ideals and European naturalism. During the reign of his successor, Shah Jahan (1628–1657), the patron of the Taj Mahal, Mughal fascination with portraiture reached its zenith. The relative naturalism of earlier Mughal painting gave way to highly formal portraits, transforming figures into iconic images of power and grandeur as is evident in a series of lavishly produced royal albums.

By the 17th century, the Mughal pictorial idiom also played a formative role in the development of painting at the Rajput courts of northern India as members of the Hindu nobility, who had been largely integrated into the empire through marriage alliances, began to employ Mughal painters and commission works of art that echoed Mughal artistic taste. In Iran too, 17th-century artists looked to India for new sources of pictorial inspiration, resulting in a distinct, hybrid style of painting.

Life and Leisure: Everyday Life in Japanese Art
August 14, 2004–February 20, 2005
"Life and Leisure: Everyday Life in Japanese Art" included a wide variety of illustrations ranging from colorful paintings abuzz with activity and humor picturing the daily lives of peasants and entertainers to glamorous images of female courtesans from the pleasure quarters fixing their lipstick or washing their hair. Several ceramic household or restaurant objects from the period, including a teapot and water caddy, water and sake bottles, a serving bowl, sushi bucket and storage jar are also on view. Although people of various social classes pursuing everyday activities had long been pictured in the backgrounds of both religious and secular Japanese paintings, it was only in the late 16th century that contented commoners pictured at work or at play began to appear as an independent central subject of Japanese art.

The Tea Ceremony as Melting Pot
August 14, 2004–February 20, 2005
From the 16th century onward, energetic foreign trade resulted in the introduction of many new varieties of utensils to Japan. Rather than being collected as curios and provided they were an appropriate size and shape, Chinese tea-leaf storage jars, tea bowls from Korea and northern Vietnam, and vases from central Vietnam joined or replaced the Chinese bronzes and ceramics that had previously been preferred for use in the tea ceremony. The search for new utensils among imported goods contributed greatly to the tea ceremony's excitement and popularity as a practice. Over time, utensils that had once been novel became established and served as models for Japanese potters to copy or interpret. This small exhibition presents a variety of imported tea utensils from the Freer collection, as well as some examples of copies made by Japanese potters.

Luxury and Luminosity: Visual Culture and the Ming Court
July 3, 2004–June 26, 2005
In the Western world, the word "Ming" is almost synonymous in meaning with dazzling blue-and-white Chinese porcelain. This special exhibition features Ming dynasty (1368–1644), imperially commissioned, cobalt-decorated porcelains and places them in the broader context of other major court arts of the period, including bright enamel-decorated porcelains, cinnabar-red carved lacquers, glittering cloisonnè and gold vessels, silk tapestries, and colorful paintings. The exhibition will feature 35 items installed in instructive juxtaposition, providing an opportunity both to examine aesthetic and technical interrelationships among Ming court-sponsored arts and to explore their larger cultural meanings. The use of art to aggrandize the imperial institution and further the rulers' domestic and foreign political agendas is revealed by the objects on display, which also invite close scrutiny and careful connoisseurship, especially of the Freer Gallery's world-famous collection of fifteenth-century porcelain.

Work and Commerce: Scenes of Everyday Life in Chinese Painting
June 19, 2004–January 17, 2005
Freer Gallery of Art
Depictions of the common people and their means and modes of making a living comprise only a small percentage of Chinese figure painting, which generally focuses on more elite interests and pastimes. Although illustrations of work and daily life may appear to be casual renditions, they often provide moral exemplars of proper societal behavior and deliver subtle lessons about the benevolence of the state.

This exhibition included a broad selection of hanging scrolls, album leaves, and fans, as well as large sections of handscrolls showing rice farmers, silk producers, weavers, herders, fishermen, workers in the transportation industry, tradesmen, and peddlers, and discusses both the particular activity that is depicted as well as the painting's underlying social or philosophical ramifications. The centerpiece of the exhibition consisted of two long handscrolls from the Yuan dynasty (14th century) depicting respectively the process of rice cultivation and the production of silk, both primary occupations of Chinese farming communities. These demonstrate the virtues of good government and benevolent rulership that enabled the farmers' success. Paintings of herdboys, who symbolize the freedom and innocence of youth, formed a discrete grouping while urban commercial environments were represented by sections of two long handscrolls. Itinerant storytellers, tradesmen, vendors, and peddlers formed yet another grouping. Images of commercial shipping, fishing, and cartage by land rounded out the exhibition.

Caliphs and Kings: The Art and Influence of Islamic Spain
May 8–October 17, 2004

This exhibition brought to Washington for the first time approximately ninety objects from the collection of the Hispanic Society of America in New York. Emphasizing themes of longevity, continuity, and transmission in the Islamic decorative arts and sciences of medieval Spain, the exhibition presented works dating from the time of the Arab conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century to the final phase of Muslim life in Spain in the 16th century.

Objects from 10th-century Córdoba illustrated the creation of a unique court aesthetic under the Umayyad caliphate that was widely copied by both Muslim and Christian rulers in the following centuries. Later works showed the eclectic, aesthetic, intellectual and political culture that resulted from the Christian conquests in the 11th-15th centuries of the cities of al-Andalus (Muslim Spain). During the 14th and 15th centuries, Muslim craftsmen working both in the Muslim Kingdom of Granada and for Christian patrons, the Crown, the nobility and the Church, and occasionally Jewish patrons in cities such as Seville, Toledo, Córdoba and Valencia produced some of the most beautiful and evocative ceramics and textiles of the time. These items were exported throughout Europe and served as models for silk and ceramic industries in regions such as the Italian peninsula.

Works of particular note included a tenth-century ivory pyxis from Madinat al-Zahra' (Córdoba), an early 15th-century armorial carpet from Letur (Murcia) made for María de Castilla, queen of Aragon, and two exquisite, illuminated, fifteenth-century Hebrew Bibles.

View the Caliphs & Kings online interactive.

Perspectives: Do-Ho Suh
April 17–September 26, 2004
"Staircase-IV," was the fourth in Suh's more recent series of monumental staircases. Meticulously stitched out of a translucent red nylon fabric, "Staircase-IV" replicated the staircase in Suh's New York apartment in 1:1 scale, complete with architectural detail that created an uncanny sense of the real while transforming density into lightness and the concrete into the remembered. The flight of stairs rose high above the ground before it reached a large and expansive plateau representing the apartment floor above. "Staircase-IV" invoked movement, impermanence and the promise of transcendence along the anonymous passage from one level to another.

Whistler in Paris: Lithographs from the Belle Epoque, 1891–1896
February 21–August 15, 2004
Whistler had first experimented with lithography in 1878 and 1879, when he produced 18 prints, but the majority of Whistler's lithographs were produced during his years with his wife, Beatrix. A popular medium in France during the last decade of the 19th century, when Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864–1901) and others produced bold lithographic poster designs to advertise cabaret entertainments, lithographs are generally made by drawing greasy crayons or washes onto a prepared limestone, which is then etched with an acidic solution. Crayoned drawings can also be made directly on paper and then tranferred by rubbing onto the stone which is then etched and inked for printing. This was Whistler's preferred method in Paris. As the image is double-reversed, Whistler's lithographs depict the original orientation of the scene, whereas his etchings do not.

The Paris lithographs function as a kind of family album—documenting the Whistlers' friends and family and the daily pleasures of their contented life together. Works on view included images of Beatrix at the piano, in her garden and at rest, as well as one of poet Stephane Mallarmè, two of Whistler's physician brother and two—one by Whistler and one by his wife—of the poet Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, whom Whistler had previously depicted in a life-sized oil painting.

Return of the Buddha: The Qingzhou Discoveries
March 20–August 8, 2004
This exhibition presented 35 extraordinary 6th-century Chinese Buddhist statues that were accidentally unearthed in 1996 by workers leveling a school sports field in Qingzhou, a small city in Shandong Province on China's northeast coast. The ranking of these sculptures among the 100 most significant archaeological finds of the 20th century puts them on a par with the First Emperor's terracotta soldiers. Their discovery has significantly advanced scholarship of Chinese Buddhist art, while at the same time their sublime beauty has renewed popular interest in Buddhist sculpture. Genuine examples, legitimate reproductions, and forgeries can all be found in today's art market, stimulated by collectors' search for works in the Qingzhou style.

These limestone statues of Buddhas and bodhisattvas project a radiant sense of calm and inner peace. They were apparently ritually interred during the 12th century for reasons that are still unclear. Part of an enormous cache of about 400 objects buried in a two-meter deep, 60 square meter pit on the site of the long-destroyed Longxing (Dragon Rise) Temple, these sculptures were mostly broken-some even repaired before their interment. The burial may have been a respectful way to retire obsolescent images, but could also have related to waves of Buddhist persecution.

Created during a 50-year period straddling the Northern Wei (386–534), Eastern Wei (534–550) and the Northern Qi (550–577) dynasties, the sculptures illustrate dramatic stylistic changes that occurred during that time. The unusual quantity of remaining gilding and vibrant red and green pigments on their surfaces provide a chance for the viewer to experience the impact of brightly decorated sculpture-the norm in ancient China. Many faces are gilded and some retain the remnants of painted mustaches, while the stone mandorlas—or backgrounds of the high relief sculptures—still display vibrant red pigments representing flames of light emanating from the Buddha.

View the Return of the Buddha interactive

Faith and Form: Selected Calligraphy and Painting from Japanese Religious Traditions
March 20–July 18, 2004
This exhibition featured works from the Sylvan Barnet and William Burto collection, which is particularly distinguished by important examples of Buddhist and Shinto inspired calligraphy and painting. Included in the exhibition were richly illuminated sutra texts, boldly expressive Zen Buddhist aphorisms rendered in ink monochrome, portraits of Zen masters and mandala paintings. These selections from the Barnet and Burto collection were complemented by related works from the collections of the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler gallery. Ranging in date from the 7th through the 19th century, the works on view illustrated the intimate relationships between calligraphy, painting, and faith transmission within the Japanese Buddhist tradition. Translations of selected texts were provided.

The exhibition was generously supported by Takashi, Koichi, and Koji Yanagi; the Feinberg Foundation; Mitsuru Tajima; and James Freeman, with additional funding from the Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries.

View the Faith & Form interactive

Guardians of the Law: Chinese Luohan Paintings
November 22, 2003 –May 23, 2004
Originating in India, the concept of "Luohan"—enlightened beings exempted by the great Buddha from the cycle of rebirth in order to act as guardians of the law—became a part of Buddhist cultic worship in China, where a small number of monks who were considered to have realized enlightenment, were selected to be luohans. Believed to possess three kinds of insight, six kinds of transcendent knowledge and immeasurable merits and virtues, the number of luohans varied over time, increasing from 16 to 500. The earliest Chinese representations of luohans can be traced to the 4th century, but it was not until after the 8th century that sinicized dragon subduing, tiger taming, or sea crossing luohans evolved, forming a new group known as the Eighteen Luohans. Over time, depictions of Luohans evolved from individualized to more formalized portraits.

Arranged in chronological order, this exhibition presented 22, late 12th to 18th century works as well as an 8th century Tang ewer and described major trends in the evolution of luohan paintings as executed by both regional or court professionals and followers of literati traditions. The exhibition also included a discussion of current scholarship about the Eighteen Luohans.

Mr. Whistler's Galleries: Avant-Garde in Victorian London
November 20, 2003 – April 4, 2004
During his lifetime, the artist James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) was as renowned for his radically spare, avant-garde exhibition designs and flamboyant, self-promotional personality as for his artwork. The Freer Gallery of Art—repository of the most important collections of Whistler's work in the world—joined with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond to commemorate the centenary of the artist's death with a major exhibition at the Smithsonian that featured a broad selection of his prints and paintings.

The exhibit created new versions of "Arrangement in White and Yellow," and "Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Grey," two of Whistler's most famous and influential installations and examined his role in the forefront of exhibition design.

Both installations were controversial and radically innovative because they challenged long-standing assumptions about the display of art. Featuring identically framed artworks that were hung widely apart on plain, lightly colored walls in moderately sized but elegantly appointed rooms at a time when exhibitions routinely displayed artwork from floor to ceiling with no space between frames, Whistler's installations paved the way for the spare exhibitions that have become the norm.

View the Whistler online exhibition.

Perspectives: Yayoi Kusama
August 30, 2003 –March 21, 2004
The Sackler gallery inaugurated its five-year program of contemporary installations with two works by the renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama who has been described as having set the stage for Post-Minimalism and feminist art. Ranging from elegant minimalist works to surreal installations featuring upholstered fetishistic objects and light bulbs, Kusama's work defies neat labeling. Her focus on repetition—the public expression of a lifetime of hysterically obsessive hallucinations—was highlighted at the Sackler in her Dots Obsession (1999), a buoyant installation composed of six giant white balloons that were covered with the artist's signature red polka dots, which themselves appeared to proliferate as they spilled over onto the physical surface of the Pavilion. The balloons hovered playfully from the lofty Pavilion ceiling above a second work titled Infinity Mirrored Room Love Forever (1996), a hexagonal, mirrored box with an opening into a kaleidoscopic vision of balls and light.

Kusama's installation created a powerful visual experience by dissolving the Pavilion's surface into pattern and drawing the viewer into her seductive yet unsettling world.

Love and Yearning: Mystical and Moral Themes in Persian Poetry and Painting
August 30, 2003 –February 22, 2004
This exhibition featured twenty-six of the finest illustrated manuscripts relating to Persian lyrical poetry highlighting the union of word and image. "Love and Yearning: Mystical and Moral Themes in Persian Poetry and Painting" contained works drawn from the Sackler and neighboring Freer galleries' renowned permanent holdings and loans from several private collections and from the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. These works demonstrate how 15th- to 17th-century artists transformed the rich imagery of mystical concepts found in Persian lyrical poetry into stylized, meticulously detailed and colorful images.

Lyrical texts describing the epic love stories of the prophet Yusuf (Joseph) and Zulaykha, Khusraw and Shirin and the crazed lover Majnun and Layli were produced on a more personal and intimate scale than manuscripts devoted to historical, scientific, or epic themes. Although small in size and few in number, the paintings accompanying lyrical texts were intricate and included repeated recognizable compositions and stock figures that became as familiar to the viewer as the verses themselves.

Manuscripts that were on view included pages from Nizami's (1145–1207) Khamsa (Quintet), Jami's (d. 1492) Haft Awrang (Seven Thrones), as well as the Bustan (Orchard) and the Gulistan (Rose garden) by Sa'di (d. 1492). Two rarely-seen textile fragments illustrated how narrative scenes were also adapted to other media.

The exhibition included an interactive station with a touch screen where visitors can view all 28 minutely detailed illustrations of the Freer's Haft Awrang in depth. An audio feature described the production of the manuscript, its patron and artists.

The exhibition and related programs were made possible by a generous grant from the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute.

View the online interactive of this exhibition.

Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure
October 18, 2003–January 11, 2004
Many of the world's finest examples of Himalayan art were on view at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in an exhibition that surveyed the remarkable range of sacred objects produced in this vast mountain region. "Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure"—based on an exhibition first seen at the Art Institute of Chicago—featured 163 Buddhist, Hindu and Bon paintings and sculptures created between the 7th and the 19th centuries. Focusing on aesthetic excellence, the exhibition invited visitors to experience an artistic trek through this fascinating region, in which religions and cultures intermingled in unique ways.

Works on view were created in an astonishingly large variety of media, scale and color, ranging from a tiny, rare and exquisite ivory of the fasting Buddha to a life-size portrait of a Nepalese king as a multiarmed, cosmic deity. Other objects on view included intricately detailed manuscript illuminations on palm leaf, paper and wood, and brightly colored thangkas (cloth paintings) depicting mandalas, deities and teachers. Benign and terrifying stone, wood and bronze images of deities, many embellished with gemstones, gilding and paint were also on view. View exhibition highlights.

Tales and Legends in Japanese Art
June 21–January 4, 2004
Enduring and familiar tales based on court literature and poetry, religious teachings, historical events and legends from both Japan and China were popular subjects for Japanese artists. Paintings appeared in a variety of formats from folding screens and hanging scrolls, which could be appreciated by a group of guests, to albums and handscrolls that were reserved for private enjoyment. Fans, boxes and trays were also decorated with these familiar scenes. Between June 21 and January 4, 2004, the Freer Gallery of Art exhibited 38 outstanding examples of this pictorial narrative Japanese art dating from the 13th to 19th centuries.

Tea Utensils Under Wraps
June 21–January 4, 2004
Some particularly significant and decorative storage solutions were on display together with their contents in this small exhibit at the Freer Gallery of Art. Storage boxes are typically made to measure from lightweight and fire-resistant paulownia wood. Not surprisingly, the box lid usually bears handwritten documentation of the object within. This may, however, also include information about the identity of previous owners, many of whom commissioned box inscriptions from tea masters or other professional connoisseurs.

"In Japan," says curator Louise Cort, "the tea utensil is the core of a much larger package of bags, boxes and wrappers that protect it but also define its identity and significance. Especially old and important objects may rest within several concentric boxes provided by successive owners. The variety and quality of the packaging materials reflect the status of the utensils within and the personal tastes of their owners, constituting a sort of material manifestation of the utensil histories."

In Pursuit of Heavenly Harmony: Paintings and Calligraphy by Bada Shanren
April 16–October 19, 2003
In 1998, the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art acquired a large number of paintings and works of calligraphy by Chinese artist Bada Shanren (1626–1705)—one of the most renowned and influential individualist painters and calligraphers of the early Qing dynasty (1644–1912). "In Pursuit of Heavenly Harmony: Paintings and Calligraphy by Bada Shanren (1626–1705) from the Bequest of Wang Fangyu and Sum Wai," was on view at the gallery from April 26 to Oct. 12, and presented all 33 of these works, which were obtained through a bequest and purchase from the estate of Fred Fangyu Wang (Wang Fangyu 1913–1997) and his wife, Sum Wai (1918–1996).

A professor of Chinese language at Yale University, Wang was one of the most prominent modern Bada Shanren scholars. Together with his wife, Wang assembled the largest and most important private collection of Bada's works in the world. Included in this exhibition are paintings from the core of Professor Wang's collection representing various stages of the artist's life.

Bada Shanren, whose true name is unknown, was born in 1626 to a branch of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) imperial family renowned for its artistic talent. Bada began writing poetry at an early age and showed early promise as a calligrapher and painter. After the fall of the Ming dynasty however, he sought refuge and anonymity as a Buddhist monk, eventually rising to the post of abbot. Bada suffered an apparent mental breakdown in the late 1670s and left the priesthood, becoming a professional painter and adopting the pseudonym "Bada Shanren." In the early 1700s, though continuing to paint, Bada became a hermit, seeking solitude and harmony with the natural order ordained by heaven.

Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics
May 3–September 7, 2003
In the turbulent world of early postwar Japan, the Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) joined Japanese ceramic artists, both traditional and avant-garde, in exploring issues of personal and national identity through the medium of clay. Internationally recognized for his sculpture, furniture, and public installations, Noguchi created ceramics only during three short sojourns in Japan. These were creative, intense periods during which he explored his roots and interacted with a surprisingly diverse range of artists, influencing and being influenced by them. This first major museum presentation of Noguchi's ceramics brought together thirty-eight of his works with thirty-six works by nine leading Japanese artists, including Kitaoji Rosanjin (1883–1959) and Yagi Kazuo (1918–1979).

In 1931 Noguchi cast clay sculpture in a Kyoto potter's studio while discovering ancient tomb sculpture and probing his relationship to Japan. Later he wrote of this experience as "my close embrace of the earth . . . a seeking after identity with some primal matter beyond personalities and possessions." He returned to Japan in 1950 as a well-known figure in the international art world, and the ceramics that he prepared for an exhibition in Tokyo reflect the formal concerns of his modernist sculpture and furniture designs. They startled Japanese viewers by their fundamental departure from concepts of ceramics as vessel forms.

Noguchi turned to ceramics for the last time in 1952 while living in Rosanjin's rural compound. He adopted the materials used by Rosanjin and two potters later designated Living National Treasures, Kaneshige Toyo (1896–1967) and Arakawa Toyozo (1894–1985), who breathed new life into the time-honored clays and glazes of Japan's regional kilns. These artists were committed to transmitting styles of classic tableware and tea utensils. Noguchi's output ranged from intimate clay sketches to large sculptures, including some designed to serve as containers for the experimental flower installations of avant-garde ikebana masters.

Like Noguchi, sculptors Okamoto Taro (1911–1996) and Tsuji Shindo (1910–1981) drew inspiration from the dynamic clay forms of Japanese prehistory. But several young Kyoto potters, led by Yagi, turned away from tradition toward the imagery of Picasso, Klee, Miro and Noguchi. Forming a group called Sodeisha (Crawling through Mud Association), they invented clay "objets" removed from function. Their daring work established a major new direction for Japanese ceramics.


Chinese Buddhist Art in a New Light
May 3–September 7, 2003
As a result of new research, several stunning sculptures were displayed for the first time, including some dated after the Tang dynasty (618–907) and represent the fascinating, but often neglected period of later Chinese Buddhist art.

The Freer's collection of Chinese Buddhist sculpture—arguably one of the best in the Western world—was for the most part acquired during the first half of the 20th century when China's depressed economy fed the antiquities trade. Collectors were able to buy stellar Chinese artifacts that were hitherto little known in the West. But many of these sculptures were removed from Buddhist religious sites without proper documentation as to their provenance within China. Furthermore some sculptures were altered before sale by re-cutting of details or by cleaning, which removed their brightly painted or gilded surface decoration. Worst of all, the marketability of Chinese Buddhist sculptures led to the development of a lively trade in forgeries, a few of which were of such high quality that they entered major collections including those at the Freer. Objects on view included:
• two stelae, both originally dated to the Northern Qi dynasty (550–577), one of which is now considered to be genuine and the other fake
• two unusual four-sided miniature marble stelae from the Six Dynasties Period (220–589)
• a gilt image of a standing Buddha, originally thought to be from the Six Dynasties Period but now considered to be fake
• an ivory statue of the figure of Guanyin in the guise of Buddha holding a sacred jewel with a spurious inscription of 1025, now re-dated to the Ming to Qing dynasty (17th–18th century).

Whistler in Venice: The Pastels
January 18–June 15, 2003
When expatriate American artist James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) went to Venice in 1879, he only intended to stay a short time in order to complete a commission for 12 etchings. Whistler fell in love with the city—especially its backwater canals and decaying palazzos—and stayed for 14 months. There he created, among other things, a large number of pastels, some of which are housed at the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art—home to the most comprehensive collection of works by Whistler in the world.

Whistler in Venice is the first of three separate Whistler exhibitions to be held at the Freer during the year 2003, which marks the centennial of the artist's death. The show highlights 14 unusually beautiful and rare examples of these works, along with etchings and a watercolor.

Whistler preferred to work outdoors but the unusually cold winter of 1880 made holding an etching needle or painting en plein aire with oils or watercolors impractical. Pastels, however, were an ideal medium. Whistler completed 90 pastels while in Venice, describing them in a letter to his dealer as being "totally new and of a brilliancy very different from the customary watercolor."

Palaces and Pavilions: Grand Architecture in Chinese Painting
September 29, 2002–March 30, 2003
Despite its imposing quality and intricate detail, grand architecture is seldom the primary subject of Chinese painting and often serves merely as a decorative backdrop to human events and activities. The twenty-six paintings in this exhibition revolve around three broad themes in which large, formal buildings play such a role: historical palaces and the daily lives of palace women, palaces in paradise and other imaginary dwellings of deities and immortals, and elegant pavilions erected by public officials or wealthy individuals and often commemorated in famous works of literature.

Over the centuries, a range of painting styles evolved to depict architecture. The meticulous blue-and-green style of landscape painting that originated during the late seventh century frequently incorporated architectural elements. However, it was only during the tenth and eleventh centuries that architecture itself emerged as a distinct genre of painting. In the eleventh century, scholar-artists began to employ the baimiao (plain outline) method, which involved detailed line drawing done in monochrome ink, and during the subsequent Southern Song (1127–1279) and Yuan (1279–1368) dynasties, another, more precise form of ink painting called jiehua(ruled line) developed that required the use of a straightedge and was the only traditional, nonfreehand style of painting.

This period marked the first great efflorescence of Chinese architectural painting and set the standard for centuries to come, with many later works claiming to preserve the appearance of lost originals from the Song and Yuan dynasties. All three major styles are represented in the exhibition. Several original works from the period are included, while many of the blue-and-green paintings are copies associated with Qiu Ying (ca. 1494–1552), one of China's most technically accomplished painters.

The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India
November 10, 2002–March 9, 2003
Among the most spectacular works of Indian sculptural art are the temple bronzes cast a thousand years ago in the Tamil-speaking region of south India during the Chola dynasty. The Hindu god Shiva Nataraja (Lord of the Dance) embodies the Chola aesthetic. Gracefully poised upon the demon of ignorance, his supple limbs engaged in the dance of cosmic creation and destruction, Shiva is the luminous embodiment of transcendent power.

Shiva Nataraja was the family deity of the Chola dynasty, the dominant cultural, artistic, religious, and political force in south India for a period of four hundred years from the ninth to the thirteenth century. The Chola kings and queens consolidated their power and proclaimed their piety by dedicating majestic temples and commissioning superb bronzes. The regal poise of Shiva's consort, Uma, and the impish charm of the elephant-headed Ganesha exemplify the graceful movement, supple modeling, and variety of Chola bronzes. Each bronze is a unique piece, sculpted first in wax and then cast in the lost-wax process, in which molten metal is poured into a hand-fashioned clay mold that must be broken apart to yield the final bronze.

Chola bronzes mark not only an aesthetic triumph but also a dramatic shift within Hindu temple practice. While every Hindu temple has at its center an immovable image of the main deity, portable bronzes were ritually enlivened by priests and then paraded out of the inner sanctums to meet and grace devotees. Chola audiences encountered these deities opulently draped in silks, jewels, and fragrant garlands, borne upon palanquins, and amid the clamor of drums and chanting. To evoke this multisensory ritual context, the exhibition includes a Shiva Nataraja draped in silk, displays of gem-encrusted gold jewelry, recordings of south Indian classical music, and verses from the Tamil poet-saints that speak of the wondrous beauty of the gods.

The Sensuous and the Sacred brings together sixty bronzes from national and European collections. It is the first exhibition in the United States devoted solely to the art of the Chola bronze. View the Chola Bronze online exhibition.

Masterful Illusions: Japanese Prints from the Anne van Biema collection
September 15, 2002–January 19, 2003
Prints were among the first of the Japanese arts to become widely appreciated outside Japan. Colorful woodblock prints of actors, courtesans, warriors, landscapes, and natural and supernatural subjects that had previously circulated in the urban Japanese marketplaces of the Edo period (1615–1868) were discovered by European and American collectors beginning in the nineteenth century. Masterful Illusions presented, in two parts, 138 prints from the collection of more than three hundred formed over a period of more than thirty years by Anne van Biema. The prints reveal her fascination with legend and imagination as expressed in Japanese prints through the combined skills of artists, block engravers, and printers who worked under the direction of publishers.

Dreams, ghosts, heroes, and villains appear in compelling images drawn from popular tales, legends, history, and theater. Lyrical and poetic themes provide a contrasting tone of elegance and aesthetic subtlety. Kabuki actors, the stars of the urban "floating world" of Edo Japan, are a focus of the collection. The brilliant skills and versatility of master actors presented audiences in Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto with exciting and visually dazzling entertainment that drove a constant demand during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for prints of popular actors in current performances.

Lavish costume, stylized makeup, elaborate wigs, and onstage transformations enhanced the illusions created by kabuki actors, who competed for audience acclaim through their creative interpretations of varied roles. Masterful Illusionswas the first exhibition of the Japanese print collection of Anne van Biema, who has promised her collection as a future gift to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and who has generously supported research and publication of the catalogue.

Whistler's Nudes
April 21, 2002–January 5, 2003
In the last twenty years of his life, the expatriate American artist James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) produced more than one hundred prints, pastel drawings, and paintings of scantily clad or nude female models. Early collectors of Whistler's work, including Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919), believed these images ranked among the artist's greatest accomplishments, but they have received little critical attention. Whistler's Nudes brings together twenty-five of the most important of the late nudes in order to explore some of the meanings they carried for Whistler and his contemporaries.

The vast majority of Whistler's nudes were created either in the early 1870s, when the artist was attempting to remake himself as a painter of complex figurative compositions, or between 1884 and his death in 1903. Almost all of the nudes from the 1870s are preparatory studies in pastel or chalk for planned but never completed oil paintings of clothed female figures. Whistler's Nudes includes several of these elegant drawings but focuses on late nudes, which Whistler thought of as finished works of art.

Most of the late nudes are pastels or lithographs, although Whistler completed several related oil paintings, including the eerily beautiful Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Little Blue Girl (1894)—one of the highlights of the exhibition. Some of the late nudes are realistic scenes of models at rest in the studio, while others are exceptionally airy drawings of lightly draped models in motion. As a group, the late nudes are strikingly sketchy and abstract, testing Whistler's ability to represent his subject with an extreme economy of line, shape, and sometimes color. Many are freighted with symbolic overtones, hinting at the artist's aesthetic faith that the creation of beauty should be the sole goal of art.