The Freer and Sackler Galleries are the Smithsonian's museums of Asian art, sharing a building and an underground connection on the south side of the Mall. The Freer holds the personal collection of Charles Lang Freer, a Detroit industrialist who spent his fortune acquiring Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Persian, and Egyptian art, plus the world's largest collection of works by James McNeill Whistler. The Sackler Gallery, opened in 1987, holds later acquisitions and hosts important loan exhibitions.
Together they represent one of the finest collections of Asian art in the Western world. Highlights include Chinese jades and bronzes, Japanese screens, Indian sculpture, Persian manuscripts, and Whistler's spectacular Peacock Room — a gilded dining room originally designed for a London townhouse, acquired by Freer in 1904. Free admission.