The MFA’s Free Memorial Day Community Weekend marks the debut of three paintings lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Northeaster (1895) by Winslow Homer; Lachrymae (Tears, about 1894–95; completed by 1901) by Frederic, Lord Leighton; and The Monet Family in Their Garden at...
Visit “To Boston With Love,” an installation of more than 1700 hand-sewn flags strung across the Shapiro Family Courtyard. The flags were created by quilters from nearly every state in the US and from countries around the world. The flags convey inspirational messages of hope,...
“Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane, Master Drawings from the Casa Buonarroti” features a rich and varied selection of 26 works from the master’s collection, preserved in the artist's family home, the Casa Buonarroti, in Florence. The exhibition includes many of...
Travel back in time and discover remarkable objects that illuminate the life, culture, and pageantry of these revered and feared Japanese warriors—from one of the best and largest collections in the world. “Samurai! Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection”...
"Blue and white" means, at its simplest, cobalt pigment applied to white clay. Over the course of a millennium, blue-and-white porcelain has become one of the most recognized types of ceramic production worldwide. With roots in the Islamic world and Asia, and strong presence in Europe and...
Watch the story of the Triumph of the Winter Queen unfold in an immersive media experience, as Gerrit van Honthorst’s painting is brought to life. The tale is dramatized through passages from the royal couple’s letters, maps, music—and even falling snow. On view in the Loring...
An extraordinary loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art gives you the opportunity to see two of the great masterpieces of French painting in America hanging side by side: Paul Cézanne’s The Large Bathers and the MFA’s own Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going...
This exhibition celebrates the MFA’s recent acquisition of the 43 prints by renowned New York photographer Bruce Davidson that were originally showcased in his groundbreaking show, “East 100th Street,” at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970. These powerful images capture the...
Don’t miss your chance to see one of the icons of Roman art on view in the MFA’s Roman Art Gallery only through May 1. The Capitoline “Brutus,” a world-famous bronze portrait of a Roman statesman is on loan from the Palazzo dei Conservatori/Capitoline Museum, Rome, for...
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...
“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...
Get an inside look at some of today’s most elusive and exclusive subjects through the lens of renowned celebrity photographer and Vogue and Vanity Fair contributor Mario Testino. Testino's first US exhibition represents the brilliant range and quality of his thirty-year career and...
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...
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...
.crop_.result_listing.jpg "Cats to Crickets")
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...
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 “...
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...
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...
“Gems of Rajput Painting” features the MFA’s superb collection of paintings made for the princes of Rajasthan and the Punjab hills (known as “Rajputs”). The kingdoms of these art-loving princes shared a common elite culture, though, by the early 1700s, each court had...
Known today as the goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite, or Venus as she was known to the Romans, was one of the most powerful ancient Greek divinities and a favorite subject in ancient art. This is the first exhibition about the powerful goddess that both ancient writers and artists described...
The nude figure was critical to the art of Edgar Degas from the beginning of his career in the 1850s until the end of his working life, but the subject has never before been explored in a Museum exhibition. “Degas and the Nude,” co-organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the...
The British experience during and after WWII was quite different from that of Americans. From the fall of 1940 through the spring of 1941, Britain was subjected to relentless bombing in a terror campaign known as the Blitz. Even after the Allied victory, Britain continued to suffer shortages of...
The 30 wood sculptures that Ellsworth Kelly has made over the course of his esteemed career are among his most beautiful and evocative works. Despite Kelly’s work being the subject of major retrospectives worldwide, this is the first museum exhibition to focus on the essential and beguiling...
This exhibition, on hiatus during summer construction, reopens with the new Linde Family Wing on September 17, 2011. 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...
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...
About the Prize: Established in 1993 in recognition of New England artist Maud Morgan (1903–1999), the Maud Morgan Prize honors a Massachusetts woman artist who demonstrates significant vision, creativity, and contributions to contemporary art in the Commonwealth. As of 2011, $10,000 is...
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...