To celebrate the centennial of Fenway Park, the Museum of Fine Arts and Boston Red Sox have partnered on an online photography contest. Fans of baseball and photography submitted their favorite Fenway photos from the past 100 years to three virtual galleries—Portrait, Landscape, and “...
This year marks Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, celebrating 60 years as monarch of Great Britain and the Commonwealth realms. Yousuf Karsh photographed Her Majesty five times between 1943 and 1987, including the three powerful portraits on view—capturing her first as...
Venice in the eighteenth century, the age of Casanova, was one of the pleasure centers of Europe, famed for its theater and opera and its carnival maskers. Even today, the city, when compared with ordinary cities, appears to be a fantasy, a dream, a hallucination. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s...
Let the dancing begin! The MFA welcomes two monumental loans from the Musée d'Orsay, Paris—Renoir's Dance in the City and Dance in the Country—as part of our Visiting Masterpieces series. These full-length canvases accompany the MFA's own iconic Renoir, Dance at...
Enter the world of glowing light and vibrant color of “Alex Katz Prints.” Bold portraits, idyllic landscapes, scenes of sophisticated leisure—they’re all here in the works of the renowned contemporary artist. With arresting simplicity of line, color, and form, Katz...
Under the guidance of artist Hannah Burr, students from eight after-school community organizations in the Boston area responded to works from the MFA’s encyclopedic collection. Through the students’ drawings, audio recordings, and transcriptions, “Fresh Eyes” demonstrates...
In 1941, the Limited Editions Club of New York invited photographer Edward Weston to illustrate its deluxe edition of Walt Whitman’s epic poem Leaves of Grass. The commission inspired Weston and his wife, Charis, to take a cross-country trip, throughout the South, the Mid-Atlantic states, New...
A fascination for all things Japanese swept the United States in the period around 1900. An influx of Japanese goods and emissaries into America sparked a wave of interest in a foreign culture once seen as impossibly remote. Artists and collectors gathered Japanese objects, studied Japanese...
We are delighted to welcome back to the Dutch and Flemish galleries masterpieces from the collection of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, including Rembrandt’s sublime Portrait of Aeltje van Uylenburgh (1632) and Dou’s sympathetic little Sleeping Dog (1650). These favorites and dozens...
Shambhala is a Sanskrit word describing a mythical land whose exact location is hidden behind mist of snow-capped mountains, where peace reigns, wealth abounds, and there is no illness. The West was first introduced to the concept as “Shangri-la” in the 1930s book and film Lost...
Images of fashion exploded in the 20th century with the proliferation of ready-to-wear and glossy fashion magazines. As photography gradually became the medium of choice for fashion advertising, artists who worked by hand began to emphasize interpretation and impression over pure likeness. They...
Edouard Manet’s friend, the poet Charles Baudelaire, described black as the color of the nineteenth century. Manet was a master in the use of black, asserting his bold and subtle imprint on a range of subjects, from exotic Spanish dancers to the horses and spectators at a thrilling Paris...
“Paper Zoo” brings together prints, drawings, and photographs of the animal kingdom (including birds and marine creatures) dating from about 1500 to the present. Featuring some 30–40 works by Rembrandt, Audubon, Picasso, and others, this delightful exhibition highlights...
The invention of photography in 1839 was a pivotal achievement that changed the course of cultural history. The early years of the medium were rich in experimentation. As each process and technique was invented, artists enthusiastically explored new possibilities for visual recording and...
Organized by the SMFA, “Histories of Now: Six Artists from Cairo” is an exhibition of recent video and multimedia installations by some of Egypt’s most important and influential contemporary artists. Signaling the myriad of social and political circumstances that preceded the 2011...
Since receiving his BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1998, Los Angeles–based artist Jedediah Caesar has gained international recognition for sculptures that amass found materials into systems that reveal new patterns, often abstract, sometime social. Gathering natural and...