Extended to December 31, 2011. A compelling new work created by world-renowned artist Christian Marclay, The Clock (2010), an ode to time and cinema, comprises thousands of fragments from a range of films that create a 24-hour, looped, single-channel video. The Clock tells the accurate...
Within Mexico’s urban setting, contemporary art and other experimental and creative practices such as architecture, design, and music flourish, forming one of the most original and intriguing art scenes in the global landscape. Taking its name from the empty advertisement billboards across...
The first exhibition in our newly renovated Japanese Print gallery focuses on a recent acquisition, a monumental hanging scroll of the Hell Courtesan by Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831–1889). Known for the charm, eccentricity, and extraordinary skill of his work, Kyōsai gleefully satirized the...
European art of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is dominated by two powerful artistic movements: Neo-classicism and Romanticism. Neo-Classicism is marked by purity, austerity, clarity, and an almost abstract obsession with the linear. The style was stimulated by the recent...
"Modernist Photography 1910–1950" features approximately 40 American modernist photographs representing highlights from the Museum's own collection as well as The Lane Collection. Complementing the work displayed in several of the other Level 3 galleries in the new Art of the...
“Around the World in Watercolor, 1860-1920” features work by Americans who sought adventure and inspiration for their art. They ventured across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and traversed the American continent. Thirty watercolors from the Museum’s permanent collection by John...
Roy Lichtenstein is known for his Pop art paintings derived from comic strips and advertisements, but his later work also drew on well-known masterpieces of art history. The ten paintings in this exhibition offer a rare chance to look closely at Lichtenstein’s interaction with impressionist...
 cropped 3.JM_.result_listing.jpg "Joan Miró, \"Series II (Plate 5),\" 1952")
Postwar Europe saw many and diverse transformations of the way in which artists depicted the human image. Figuration and abstraction were the contending elements in a dynamic dialogue boldly visible in the work of Alberto Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet, Pablo Picasso, and their many contemporaries....
"Two Masters of Fantasy: Bresdin and Redon" features the prints and drawings of two artists who explored worlds of the imagination, the inner reality of the subconscious, and of dream. The eccentric French printmaker and draftsman Rodolphe Bresdin (1822-1885) created a miniature world...
This exhibition explores photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb’s poetic vision of Cuba, the Caribbean island that—because of the color of its soil—is occasionally known as the "Violet Isle." The couple became fascinated with the paradoxes of the place some...
Benzaiten, the goddess of music and good fortune, has been revered in Japan from ancient times to the present. This exhibition explores the long-lasting popularity of the goddess in Japanese culture and the iconographical transformations of her image over 500 years. See her orthodox depiction as...
Under the guidance of artist Raul Gonzalez, students from eight after-school community organizations in the Boston area will create family portraits using pen, ink, and color in 11 x 17" stained paper. The project is intended to draw inspiration from paintings representing families and...
This exhibition focuses on the accomplishments of African weavers, dyers, bead embroiderers, and tailors, and highlights continuities, innovation, and the exchange of ideas from within and without that mark dress and textile production in Africa. More than any other artistic expression, dress and...
Over the course of his career, Dale Chihuly has revolutionized the art of blown glass, moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture and establishing the use of glass—inherently a fragile but also magical material—as a vehicle for installation and environmental art. This...
The embroideries of colonial Boston girls and women have long been treasured family possessions and are now much sought after by collectors. The charm and craftsmanship of the Adam and Eve samplers, pastoral pictures with leaping stags and galloping hunters, as well as crewelwork bed hangings and...
The Maida and George Abrams Collection is one of the finest assemblages ever brought together of Dutch drawings, featuring works from the late 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The core of the collection is the splendid range of 17th-century drawings. In the northern Netherlands, the 17th century saw...
"An Unspoken Dialogue with Japanese Tea" has been organized to complement an exhibition and a series of programs focusing on the contemporary Japanese tea bowl to be held in the Boston community during spring 2011. Drawn from the extensive holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts' Morse...
This exhibition is selected from the wide-ranging art holdings of Bank of America, one of the largest and most comprehensive corporate collections of photography in the world. The collection was significantly influenced by scholars Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, who in the late 1960s assembled a core...
Love of nature and awareness of the changing seasons, longstanding motifs in the literary and visual arts of Japan, often appear in the ukiyo-e woodblock prints that chronicle the life of the urban middle class during the Edo period (1615-1867). As Japan gradually developed the characteristics of...
A tour abroad exposed artists to new environments, historic architecture and monuments, and famous art collections. It also enabled them to receive instruction from continental masters and interact with daring avant-garde artists. “Artists Abroad: London, Paris, Venice, and Rome 1825-1925...
The embroideries of colonial Boston girls and women have long been treasured family possessions and are now much sought after by collectors. The charm and craftsmanship of the Adam and Eve samplers, pastoral pictures with leaping stags and galloping hunters, as well as crewelwork bed hangings and...
In this groundbreaking exhibition, contemporary Chinese ink painters engage in dialogue with classical artworks from China’s past. At the core of this exhibition’s concept is an artist-in-residency program. Leading artists from China and the Chinese diaspora have come to Boston to...
One of the remarkable aspects of seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture is the extraordinary number of gifted artists—even if we leave aside artists of Rembrandt’s caliber—who were active in those years. This is true not only for painting but also for drawing. The Maida and...
"Modernist Photography 1910–1950" features approximately 40 American modernist photographs representing highlights from the Museum's own collection as well as The Lane Collection. Complementing the work displayed in several of the other Level 3 galleries in the new Art of the...
Join us for Member Preview Days November 14 to 19. See below for dates and hours. Sunday, November 14 Noon-8 pm Family activities, Noon-5 pm Monday-Tuesday, November 15-16 10 am-4:45 pm Wednesday-Thursday, November 17-18 10 am-9:45 pm Friday, November 19 10 am-4:45 pm The...
Since receiving her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts (1998) and her MFA from Yale (2002), Kristin Baker has gained international recognition for her distinctive painting process. Instead of brushes on canvas, she uses squeegees and scrapers to slide acrylic paint across...
This exhibition celebrates the designer Arnold Scaasi and the MFA’s recent acquisition of his archive and more than 100 of his designs. Arnold Scaasi, who began his business in New York in the mid-1950s was one of the few New York designers to concentrate on custom-made clothing rather than...
"Chinese Master Paintings from the Collection" highlights some of the most rarefied masterpieces from the Chinese painting canon. Two themes emerge from the exhibition. First, the exhibition presents a concentration of imperial works, including the Thirteen Emperors scroll from the Tang...
Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) is one of the great French artists of the 19th century. His images of rural life are among the most recognized and beloved in the history of art, and his innovative treatment of light and color anticipates Impressionism. This exhibition features a...
Japanese images of heaven and hell range from depictions of serene paradises to grotesque realms of punishment. Heaven, situated in a land of bliss where devotees are reborn to reside with Amida, the Buddha of Infinite Light, is typically represented by luxurious palaces, jeweled trees, and...
Richard Avedon was one of the greatest image-makers of the twentieth century. He revolutionized fashion photography with his imaginative, spirited portrayals of the "good life” showing beautiful women wearing extraordinary clothes in irresistible settings, as well as memorable portrayals...
American and European prints, drawings, and collages acquired in the last half-decade dramatically document the kaleidoscopic diversity of the art of our time. For example, German printmaker Christiane Baumgartner begins with a photographic video image but cuts it in wood by hand, often on very...