Holiday weekend

It's the Chinese New Year, so this seemed like a great time to go to the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian Institution where they have their National Museum of Asian Art to view their collections of Chinese artifacts, especially their temporary exhibit on Chinese musical instruments as an art form. Naturally, I had to take some pictures.

The Freer Gallery was the first museum of fine arts in the Smithsonian, built back in the 1920s to house the collection of Charles Freer, a railroad tycoon who collected American and Oriental art. A lot of people don't realize that the Smithsonian's fine arts collections are fairly limited, since the major art collections in town are at the Corcoran Gallery and the National Gallery of Art, both of which are separate institutions from the Smithsonian. Where the Smithsonian does shine, however, are in the more esoteric collections outside of the Euro-American mainstream. The Asian collection is world-renowned, including some Chinese bronzes and ceramics which are over 4,000 years old, and a vast quantity of Chinese masterpieces from the first millennium A.D.

Here are some pictures of some of the more interesting pieces of art I saw this weekend. I didn't write down what all of them were, exactly where they were from, or when they were made, but these are all specifically Chinese pieces. So, just enjoy them cause I thought they were pretty.








Meanwhile, it's been a beautiful weekend in D.C. The temperatures have been in the 50s and 60s, so everyone is running around in short sleeves and shorts.

We're observing all the Chinese New Year traditions. We put up a little Chinese poem in the entry hall. We're not sweeping the floor today. We're not taking garbage out the front door (which in our case means not taking it out at all since we've only one door). And the thing I hate most, I haven't washed my hair all day—I can't wait til tomorrow! The dragon parade in Chinatown isn't til next weekend. We went to dinner tonight, too—more about that later.

The Freer Gallery wasn't all "historical" pieces. Here are some pictures of the installation in the entry lobby of the museum. It's called "Floating Mountains, Singing Clouds," by Mai-ling Hom, and it's a brand-new temporary installlation made from chicken wire.