The Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art, one of the two national museums of Asian art, will present a variety of special public programs and connective exhibitions with the adjacent Arthur M. Sackler Gallery before it closes to the public Jan. 4, 2016, for major renovations. The Freer is scheduled to reopen in spring 2017 with modernized technology and infrastructure, refreshed gallery spaces and an enhanced Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Auditorium.

To celebrate the Freer’s final weekend before its hiatus, the museum will host a special event “Say Goodbye to the Freer!” Jan. 2-3, 2016, during regular museum hours, 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Visitors can create their own “mini galleries” with a shoe box and cutouts of Freer masterpieces during a family-friendly open studio in the Freer galleries, demonstrating one possible application of Open F|S, the entirely digitized collection of the Freer and Sackler galleries, which will remain accessible online throughout the closure. Visitors can explore the Open F|S resource during the event with museum-provided iPads.

Visitors can also don a mask and a Peacock Room temporary tattoo while they take a special tour of staff favorite objects in the Freer, pose for pictures with life-sized cutouts of Charles Lang Freer and James McNeill Whistler and relive the evolution of the Smithsonian’s first art museum with a video timeline of the Freer’s history. Visitors are encouraged to share their pictures with the hashtag #freersackler.

FEATURED EXHIBITIONS

The Freer Gallery will also feature three closing exhibitions with illuminating artistic connections to temporary shows in the Sackler Gallery, which will remain open during the renovation.

“Bold and Beautiful: Rinpa in Japanese Art” explores 37 masterworks by Japanese artists who created striking images for paintings, ceramics, textiles and lacquerware, and are rooted in the work of the 17th-century Kyoto painter Tawaraya Sōtatsu, whose work and legacy as father of Rinpa are currently featured in the Sackler’s groundbreaking exhibition “Sotatsu: Making Waves,” on view through Jan. 31, 2016.

As one of the great treasures of the Freer Gallery, and an icon of American art, the Peacock Room continues to inspire conversation with its complicated story of art, money and animosity. “Peacock Room REMIX” at the Sackler Gallery, on view until Jan. 2, 2017, centers on “Filthy Lucre,” an immersive interior by painter Darren Waterston. He reinterprets Whistler’s famed Peacock Room as a resplendent ruin that is literally overburdened by its own excesses of materials, history and creativity.

“The Nile and Ancient Egypt” presents exceptional ancient Egyptian artifacts in the collection of the Freer Gallery. Made of glass, wood and stone, these objects illuminate the important role water animals played in ancient Egyptian religion and concepts of the afterlife. At the Sackler, visitors can see contemporary art from Egypt with “Perspectives: Lara Baladi,” featuring a large-scale tapestry that reflects the Egyptian-Lebanese artist’s interest in the proliferation of images of Egypt, on view until June 5, 2016.