The Freer Gallery of Art (FGA) was conceived by its founder, Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919), as a museum and a research institution. A Detroit industrialist, Freer collected more than 9,420 art objects and manuscripts before his death, including one of the largest collections of works by James McNeill Whistler; works by contemporary American artists including Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Abbott Handerson Thayer, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Dwight William Tryon, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens; and major collections of Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian, Near Eastern, and Indian objects.

In 1904, Freer informally proposed to President Theodore Roosevelt that he give to the nation his art collection, funds to construct a building, and an endowment fund to provide for the study and acquisition of "very fine examples of oriental, Egyptian, and near eastern fine arts." The deed of gift was executed in 1906 after the Smithsonian Institution's Board of Regents accepted Freer's offer on behalf of the government. Construction on the building to house the collection began in 1916 and was completed in 1921. On May 9, 1923, the FGA was opened to the public. The Gallery is an Italian Renaissance-style building of Massachusetts granite and Tennessee marble. The building was designed by American architect and landscape planner Charles A. Platt.

In 1982 Arthur M. Sackler gave the Smithsonian his collection of Chinese and Middle Eastern Art, valued at more than fifty million dollars, as well as a gift of four million dollars to help defray construction of a gallery in the Quadrangle Building on the Mall. This donation, known as the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, is administered jointly with the collections of the Freer Gallery of Art, whose Director is also Director of the Sackler Gallery. It opened to the public in 1987.

In 1920, John Ellerton Lodge, Curator of the Asiatic Department of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was appointed the Freer's first Director. Lodge was the personal choice of Freer and continued to maintain his staff position at the Museum of Fine Arts until 1931. Lodge was Director of the Gallery until 1942; and in 1943 Archibald G. Wenley, who had been sent by Lodge to China, Japan, and France to study Asian languages, literature and history, became Director. Wenley held the position until 1962. Wenley was followed by John A. Pope, 1962-1971; Harold P. Stern, 1971-1977; Thomas Lawton, 1977-1987; and Milo Cleveland Beach, 1988- .

Revised: August 29, 2002