The Peacock Room Comes to America

The Peacock Room Comes to America documents the history of Whistler’s Peacock Room and its recent re-installation with Asian ceramics collected by Charles Lang Freer. Lee Glazer, curator of American art, looks at Freer’s acquisition of the Peacock Room and how he incorporated it into his home in Detroit. There, Freer filled its shelves with ceramics from China, Korea, Syria, and Iran, using the room as a type of aesthetic laboratory where color harmonies could be appreciated. Other sections of the book provide insight into Whistler’s Princess from the Land of Porcelain, the conservation of the room, and the curator’s perspective on the project. New photography of the room is bolstered by the inclusion of archival images.  63-page paperback book with 79 color and black and white photographs.

Museum Provenance

As Smithsonian museums, the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery hold in trust the nation’s extraordinary collections of Asian art and of American art of the late nineteenth-century aesthetic movement. Our mission is to encourage enjoyment and understanding of the arts of Asia and the cultures that produced them. We use works of art to inspire study and provoke thought.

Every Smithsonian purchase will arrive with a museum provenance card explaining how it is adapted from or inspired by an object or objects in our collection.