WHEN ARTIST DARREN WATERSTON dreamed up Filthy Lucre, his extravagant room-size riff on James McNeill Whistler’s iconic Peacock Room, he never imagined that his creation would one day go head-to-head with its celebrated muse.

“Initially there were a few people who were like, ‘Oh, my God, this is a sacrilege,’ ” says Waterston, 49, of Peacock Room REMIX: Darren Waterston’s Filthy Lucre, which will position his modern-day creation alongside the Gilded Age jewel of Washington, D.C.’s Freer and Sackler Galleries when it opens...