The Freer Gallery of Art along with the Arthur Sackler Gallery, is an Asian based art museum, that helps form the national museums of Asian Art of the Smithsonian Institution. The collection currently holds 9,917 pieces of Asian art. Located on the National Mall, directly behind the Smithsonian Castle, is the home to the gallery. The main entrance to the Sackler Gallery is situated off of the gardens of the Smithsonian Castle along Independence Avenue. The main gallery space is underground, and the building connects both the Freer Gallery and the National Museum of African Art.

In 1987 Arthur Sackler, a research physician and medical doctor, donated around one thousand Asian art objects to the Smithsonian as well as four million dollars towards the gallery’s construction. The Sackler Gallery was then opened. Highlights from his donation included, early Chinese bronzes and jades, Chinese paintings, lacquer ware, ancient Near Eastern ceramics, metal ware, and sculptures from South and Southeast Asia.

The gallery since 1987 as been expanding to include, the velvet collection, an important assemblage of the Islamic arts. 19 thru 20 century Japanese prints and contemporary porcelain, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean paintings, were also included. The gallery frequently hosts international exhibitions highlighting aspects of Asian art. More recently the gallery hosted Garden and Cosmos, the Royal Paintings of Johdpur and the Tsars and the East. International loan exhibitions have also included Timur and the Princely Vision” Persian Art and Culture in the fifteenth century; Yani: The brush of innocence, featuring paintings by a fourteen year old Chinese prodigy. Located in the Freer and Sackler Galleries, you can find Eugen and Agnes E. Meyer’s Auditorium, it provides a venue of broad variety of free public programs relating to the collections of the Freer and Sackler Galleries. Some of which include concerts of Asian Music and Dance, films, lectures, chamber music and dramatic presentations.

The museum itself was designed by Jean Carlhan of Shepley, Bulfinch, Abbott and Richardson and was completed in the year 1987. Carlhan had used pink granite exterior surfaces to relate to the Smithsonian Castle and gray granite to relate to the Freer. Although the collections and exhibits are separately stored and viewed, they both have the same director, administration, and staff.