Freer Freedom: How a Single-Collector Museum Cut Loose

While I’m on the subject of the Wall Street Journal, do not miss today’s museum-related article on the estimable page for which I write, “Leisure & Arts” (on which there is nary an advertorial or infomercial). It’s a piece with possible lessons for other single-collector museums that are chafing against the restrictions imposed long ago by their founders.
Milo Beach, former director of the Freer and Sackler galleries in Washington, has published a thoughtful piece on the evolution of the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery, formed 100 years ago by a single collector, Charles Lang Freer, who imposed tight strictures on the institution’s future collecting and exhibition practices. The institution nevertheless managed to “redefine itself for another [era], and for different audiences, without losing its integrity”—a feat achieved by appending a new, less encumbered facility, the Sackler, which opened in 1987:
Major loan exhibitions could come to the Sackler, and Freer objects could finally be seen next door to closely related works from collections world-wide. A legal ruling soon followed allowing Freer objects to be intermixed, for limited periods only, with works presented in the new spaces. The change, while respecting Freer’s concerns for access, has enormously revitalized the Freer as an institution.
Taking a page from the Freer’s lesson book, maybe the money being raised for the new Barnes in Philadelphia could be used instead to construct and endow an addition to the old Barnes—one that could help bring its programs and practices into the 21st century, without destroying what the cantankous connoisseur so painstakingly created.
Subscribers to the online WSJ can get Beach’s article here. The rest of you: Pick up a copy and turn to D6.