Sackler and Freer

It was wonderful weather yesterday - 70 - 75 degrees and no humidity. I had heard the day before that it was going to be nice, so I made plans to take Metro Access to the Freer/Sackler Galleries. I chose those museums to attend because I'd never been to them, and to see Gods of Angkor: Bronzes from the National Museum of Cambodia. It was really amazing to see these ancient bronzes, some even from prehistoric times. It just amazes me to think that primitive man even back in prehistory knew and cared enough to distill and mix metals, create molds, and pour bronzes. Here is one bronze
It is a god who is half boy/half elephant.

While there, I looked through a number of the exhibits, but there a still many more to see. They had a large Whistler exhibit in the Freer. Apparently, Freer, himself, was a friend of Whistler (hmmm... wonder if his Whistler's mother knew about this?), and it was Whistler who convinced Freer to concentrate his art collection on oriental art. Whistler's art was heavily influenced by Japanese and Chinese works.

I also walked through the Korean ceramics, Many of them are beautiful, but. to tell you the truth, my main reaction is astonishment that ceramics could survive intact for 2,000 years. Not all of them were that old, of course, but some are.

There was tons more to see that I never got to. I barely skimmed Chinese or Japanese or Egyptian or Thai. I did see In the Realm of the Buddha. That was impressive because they had lots of representations of Buddha made of many different materials from all through the ages. There was even a recreated "Tibetan Shrine" to go in.

This was all particularly fascinating to me because Religion was one of my double majors in college, and Buddhism was one of the two religions I concentrated my major on, The exhibit sure made me aware of how much I've forgotten since college!

As a matter of fact, both these museums leave me realizing anew how much stuff there is out there for me to learn!