//
Photo: via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Asia is a rather large place, and a tour through these Asian Art museums is a bit like a travel from Japan to Turkey. The Asian galleries, along with the connected African Art museum are a lot quieter and more peaceful than the huge museums to the east, which can be quite a relief! Like their companion museum above, the Freer and Sackler galleries host very frequent events.
The Freer Gallery of Art is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. focusing on Asian art. The Freer and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the United States. The Freer and Sackler galleries house the largest Asian art research library in the country and contain art from East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Islamic world, the ancient Near East, and ancient Egypt, as well as a significant collection of American art.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
This distinctive brick-red structure was the original Smithsonian museum. The building now presents an overview of the Smithsonian system as well as occasional exhibitions. Just south of the castle, the beautiful Haupt Garden features an ornate parterre as well as some quieter enclaves; it is a great place to stop to rest or eat.
A much smaller museum of art than the massive National Gallery and Hirshhorn museums, but it is excellently exhibited, and extremely family-friendly, with daily events and programs for kids. The exhibits subvert the name of the museum, showing that creative arts from the African continent, traditional and contemporary, are too diverse to fit neatly under the title of "African Art." The museum hosts frequent performances of storytellers, musicians, films, etc.
This beautiful building was the first major museum on the mall, built as the National Museum in 1881 to house the Smithsonian's earliest collections. The collections have since been moved to the Natural History and American History museums, but the building still does host occasional exhibits (and serves as office space for the Smithsonian).
The real show stoppers here are the gargantuan, complete dinosaur fossils, and you won't have to search to find them! Further into the museum you'll find displays of world cultures, meteorites, mineral samples, and the evolution of life from beginnings to today. Don't leave without seeing the overawing precious rock collection, including the Hope Diamond, the enormous blue diamond of legend. A dining area is on the first level of this museum. The food is good, but somewhat pricy.
Home to D.C.'s premier collection of international modern and contemporary art, housed in an intimidating brutalist spaceship of a building. The exhibits are wonderfully stimulating and cutting-edge, albeit often not made accessible to casual viewers (a free docent-led tour available noon-4PM can be helpful), and very often not family-friendly with very graphic content. The museum tries to make it clear when you are about to walk into an "adult exhibit," but do not count on this if you are with children. The sculpture gardens, however, are great fun for kids, and a nice quiet escape from the Mall proper. And this modern sculpture collection of several Rodins, a huge Lichtenstein brushstroke, and other famous works, is world-class!
There is a lot here in one of the city's most informative museums, covering topics ranging from war to technology, social and political history. The biggest draw, though, is the Treasure Room, with an astonishing set of iconic Americana objects, ranging from the original Star-Spangled Banner and Abraham Lincoln's top hat, to Kermit the Frog and Dorothy's ruby slippers!