Shortly after photographer Mario Testino went to England from his native Peru in 1976, he took his first photograph of British royalty, an impromptu shot of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and her grandson, Prince Edward, as they passed by crowds gathered in London’s streets to...
“Kings, Queens, and Courtiers: Royalty on Paper” features examples of the various ways in which European rulers and their aristocratic followers have been represented on paper from the sixteenth century to 1900. In several instances (as with Emperor Maximilian I of Austria, Henri II...
The international poster mania of the 1890s made fine art accessible to the masses, bringing it out of the salon into the streets and shop windows. Great posters proliferated, however, long after this “golden age,” as revealed by the standout images in “Art in the Street”...
Chinese lacquer, derived from the sap or resin of trees native to China, has been made for more than 2,000 years. Technically challenging and time-consuming to create, lacquer was considered a luxury material, on par with gold and silver, and was created for the Imperial court and wealthy elite,...
The official philosophy of Korea’s Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910) was Confucianism. Buddhism was suppressed during this period, but in practice, many, including the royal family, continued to believe in Buddhism and to support temples financially. Many temples moved out of the towns to...
In the decades around 1900, postcards were Twitter, e-mail, Flickr, and Facebook, all wrapped into one. A postcard craze swept the world, as billions of cards were bought and mailed, or just pasted into albums. Many famous artists turned to the new medium, but one of the great pleasures of...
Remembered by SMFA faculty and staff as a particularly disciplined student, New York painter Daniel Rich has spent a decade investigating the link between architecture, nationalism, and political power. Rich works from Google images, newspapers, and his own photographs. His labor-intensive and...
This exhibition features a range of works from participants in the MFA's Artful Healing program, which brings the MFA collection and Museum educators to three partner institutions—Massachusetts General Hospital, Children’s Hospital Boston, and Dana Farber Cancer Institute—to...
Ori Gersht is a conduit between the past and the present. With the latest digital technology, Gersht’s work poetically revisits sources ranging from 19th-century romantic landscape painting to the Holocaust, which imbue his work with a compelling tension between beauty and violence, memory...
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Urban commoners in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japan, known as the Floating World, enjoyed a hedonistic lifestyle that included the pleasure of the companionship of pet animals. Many woodblock prints of fashionable beauties show them accompanied by elegant, pampered pets that symbolize...
Beginning in the first decades of the nineteenth century, artists and writers were drawn to the pristine beauty of north New Hampshire's natural wonders: majestic peaks in the Franconia and Presidential ranges crowned by Mount Washington, the highest summit in the northeast; Crawford, Pinkham...
Contemporary art has a dynamic home at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, located in the MFA’s dramatic I. M. Pei-designed building. The wing features seven galleries introducing innovative approaches to contemporary art within the context of...
What is a gem? "Jewels, Gems, and Treasures: Ancient to Modern," the first exhibition in the Museum's new Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Family Foundation Gallery, examines the various roles and meanings associated with a wide range of gem materials. Drawn from the MFA...
The centerpiece of the MFA’s historic expansion is a spectacular new wing for the Art of the Americas collection, which will double the number of objects from the collection on view, including several large-scale masterpieces not displayed for decades. Learn more about the new wing.