Detail: Venue: Freer, gallery 6 and 7

Continuing a celebration of important
Freer holdings in Edo period art,
complementary but distinct installations
examine two themes of these works. Edo
Aviary (gallery 6) traces how depictions
of birds, long part of the Japanese
visual repertoire, were influenced by
natural history painting in the Edo
period. Great attention was given to
physical accuracy, but the tendency to
give birds anthropomorphic qualities
also came to the fore. Poetic License:
Making Old Words New (gallery 7) shows
how the interpretation of classical
Japanese and Chinese literary
traditions, previously the domain of an
educated aristocracy, was absorbed into
the merchant and artisan classes during
the Edo period, producing energetic
reconsiderations of time-honored themes.