Displaying items by tag: arthur m. sackler gallery

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe has announced a $1 million gift to the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian Asian art museums, to support their ongoing work to promote his country’s art and culture.

The gift was announced during a dinner Wednesday at the Freer that was part of the Japanese leader’s official visit to Washington.

“I would like to express my appreciation to the Freer Gallery of Art for its dedication to Japanese art but also for giving us such a wonderful venue to promote people-to-people exchanges between Japan and the United States,” Abe said.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted a press presentation on Monday, February 16, 2015, in the Museum’s Chinese Galleries to reveal early details about The Costume Institute’s upcoming exhibition "China: Through the Looking Glass," opening on May 7.

Silas Chou, Wendi Murdoch, Anna Wintour, Wong Kar Wai, and Joe Zee joined Museum President Emily K. Rafferty, Costume Institute Curator Andrew Bolton, and Douglas Dillon Chairman of the Department of Asian Art Maxwell K. Hearn in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery for a glimpse at some of the Chinese art and film, as well as high fashion, to be featured in the exhibition, on view May 7–August 16, 2015, at the Met in New York City.

The Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art in Washington, DC, are due to release their entire collections online on January 1, 2015. More than 40,000 works, from ancient Chinese jades to 13th-century Syrian metalwork and 19th-century Korans, will be accessible through high-resolution images without copyright restrictions for non-commercial use. The vast majority—nearly 35,000 objects—have never been seen by the public.

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery are the first Smithsonian museums and the only Asian art museums to complete the labor-intensive process of digitizing and releasing their entire collections online.