Freer+and+Sackler+Galleries+Reflection

Today I visited the Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. Both of these galleries are devoted to Asian art. The art on display at the Freer Gallery took various forms, many of which were everyday objects found in households across Asia. It included items from China, Tibet, India, Iran, Japan and Thailand. Rather than just traditional paintings and sculpture, there were many decorative vessels, ceramics, bronze serving dishes, ceremonial weapons, and poetry written on paintings. This led me to believe that these ancient cultures valued beauty and tried to make art part of everyday life. I found the art interesting because of the amount of fine detail in each piece and the level of skill and dedication shown in the works. The Sackler Gallery featured more ceramic, jade and bronze objects and also had a display of past emperors and empresses of the Qing Dynasty. There were nearly life size portraits of many generations of this line of emperors and empresses, all of whom were depicted wearing elaborate robes and other traditional garments. There was also a photographic display of Cixi, the last dowager empress of the Qing Dynasty. I liked the Sackler Gallery better because it was interesting to learn more about the lives of real people through art. I found it more engaging than simply looking at objects in the Freer Gallery. I haven’t been exposed to Asian art as much as Western art, so this experience has made me more appreciative of their culture and more aware of their beautiful art styles.

This sounds like an AMAZING experience. (Talk to me about how many hours you spent there). __The reflection, however, should be rewritten__. Do not focus on what you SAW. Focus instead on what you LEARNED. For instance, how did what you see deepen your knowledge or change your opinion of Cixi? Don't stop at merely mentioning these artifacts' existence. Dig deeper and describe what you were thinking.

REFLECTION 7, ENGLISH 10

Recently I visited the Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. My reactions to these two galleries were different for each one. In the Freer Gallery, I thought it was interesting how different Asian cultures would turn everyday objects like bowls and utensils into works of art. These items made me think about the everyday objects I see and how different they are from the ones in the museum.

Before we went to the Sackler Gallery, we spent some time in the center Meditation Garden. I had known that many Asian households tended to have courtyards towards the center of them, so it was nice to see one for myself in the museum. I always thought that these courtyards were cool and must have been a nice, quiet place in a home. I liked how the museum put a courtyard in the center of the two galleries to mimic an Asian household.

The Sackler Gallery was the more interesting of the two. I enjoyed seeing the portraits of emperors and empresses more than I did looking at the Asian artifacts. It was interesting for me because I could see what some of the people we learned about in class looked like and how they dressed. This made the whole experience seem more “real”. I saw a lot of photographs of the last empress dowager, Cixi. One of the things I noticed in almost all of her pictures was that she always had western objects around her. I thought that this may have been either because she really enjoyed western culture and artifacts, or she was trying to appear diverse and sophisticated in the photos. 1 I learned a lot about how influenced China was by western ways through these pictures and also how China seemed almost like a mix between modern and ancient.

1. Nice catch. Your analysis is right on, although I wish you had gone even one more step and gotten into WHY she might have wanted to appear "diverse and sophisticated" or why she wanted to make it known she "enjoyed Western culture." Could the western objects in these photos been a desperate attempt to appear Western to get help with modernizing China, or to gain the Westerners as allies as they worked together to stop rebellions?

REFLECTION 9, ENGLISH 10