April 2013
If the end of winter has you ready for adventure, the MFA is a great place to be an “armchair traveler” with journeys to Japan and Italy this spring.
“Samurai! Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection” opens with Member Preview Days, April 9 to 13, and displays magnificent works of armor from one of the largest, most important collections in the world. Travel back to Japan’s feudal era, when shoguns ruled and their samurai—warriors revered for their virtues of loyalty, honor, courage, integrity, respect and benevolence—shaped the country’s history, clad in armor designed and constructed to protect the wearer and intimidate adversaries.
See highlights of our collection of Japanese art in a new gallery along with an exhibition of surimono, the most luxurious of Japanese prints. Sign up for a course on Japanese cultural history from the feudal past to the pop-centric present, and see classic samurai films. Enjoy spring April Vacation Week activities centering on Japanese art, April 16 to 19. Kids under 17 are free during school vacation week!
No mention of spring would be complete without the much beloved Art in Bloom on April 27 to 29. Celebrate the season with our festival of fine art and flowers.
Italian treasures visiting from Italy this spring include a highly important loan from Rome’s Capitoline Museums: the striking bronze sculpture known as the Capitoline “Brutus.” Take advantage of this rare opportunity to look this Roman portrait in the eye, through May 1. And, beginning April 23, get a look at 26 drawings by Michelangelo from the artist’s family home, the Casa Buonarroti in Florence.
Channel your inner warrior, look a Roman statesman in the eye, smell the flowers—and enjoy the richness of this season at the MFA.
Malcolm Rogers
Ann and Graham Gund Director Museum of Fine Arts, Boston