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It can be said that eponymous museums, by their very nature, memorialize and celebrate their founders, and that their practices and self-understanding are typically guided not just by the legal conditions of their original gifts but by discursive frames determined by founders and their curated memories. In the case of Charles Lang Freer and the Freer Gallery, biography and institutional history have been entangled, even in some respects elided, and historical characterizations of the museum's founder have prescribed institutional norms.
In this online program, director Chase F. Robinson will address one aspect of a revisionist project of biography and institutional history. Freer, one reads frequently, was as modest as he was private. Such descriptions have been taken at face value and cannot be squared with the facts. Ever alert to his reputation, Freer was his own publicity machine, and his skill at reputation management was obscured by his almost Wizard of Oz–like ability to curate modesty as core to his persona.
This talk is part of the monthly lunchtime series Sneak Peek: New Research from the National Museum of Asian Art, where staff members present brief, personal perspectives and ongoing research, followed by discussion. This year, the online series focuses on the theme of word and image—including calligraphy, seals, inscriptions, manuals, narratives, and poetry—in the collections of the National Museum of Asian Art.
Chase F. Robinson has been the Dame Jillian Sackler Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art, which together comprise the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, since December 2018. During his tenure, the museum has increased the number of visitors both on-site and online, expanded the collections by over 5,400 works, established new community-based and international partnerships, placed itself at the forefront of provenance research, and nearly doubled the size of its board of trustees. A highly regarded scholar of Islamic history and culture, Robinson previously served as provost (2008–2013) and president (2013–2018) of the Graduate Center, the research campus of the City University of New York. Robinson has authored or edited nine books and more than forty articles that span the geographical and chronological breadth of the Islamic Middle East. They include A Medieval Islamic City Reconsidered: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra (2001), Texts, Documents and Artefacts: Islamic Studies in Honour of D.S. Richards (2003), and the first volume of The New Cambridge History of Islam (2010). His book Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives: The First 1,000 Years (2016) was translated into several languages. Robinson received his doctorate from Harvard University’s Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations.
Image:
Newspaper clipping from press cutting book (detail), Chicago Enquirer. “Bartering for the Precious Biblical Manuscripts.” January 5, 1908, Charles Lang Freer Papers, National Museum of Asian Art Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of the Estate of Charles Lang Freer, box 253, press cutting book III |
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