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...
“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...
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...
Among the most compelling of Nicholas Nixon’s series of photographs are the portraits that he has made of his close-knit family. These photographs, taken over time, explore the nature of long-committed relationships. The exhibition features the entire sequence of the celebrated portraits of...
The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation), has graciously lent The Sower, painted in the town of Arles in southern France in November of 1888. It is shown in the Sidney and Esther Rabb Gallery with a work that van Gogh had known through reproductions since at least the early...
The Shahnama, often called the "national epic" of Iran, was completed around the year 1010 by the Persian poet Abu'l Qasim Firdawsi. A vast and complex poem, it opens with the creation of the world and concludes with the Muslim conquest of Iran in the mid-seventh century, thus...
For the "Signs and Symbols" project, children from after-school programs and community organizations across Boston looked at how words and characters are paired together to convey messages. Working with Cambridge-based artist and author Caleb Neelon, the children then created signs...
This year’s “SMFA Traveling Scholars” exhibition features works by five Museum School alumni who each received the prestigious Traveling Scholarship Award in 2008. The artists traveled locally and internationally and produced a new body of work on view in the exhibition. Fresh and...
Tattooing became an important feature of Japanese urban popular culture in the early 19th century, influenced strongly by the success of a series of woodblock prints featuring Chinese martial arts heroes with spectacular tattoos, vividly imagined by the artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi. Tattoo artists...
Luis Meléndez (1716–1780) was the greatest still life painter of 18th-century Spain. An accomplished painter of miniatures, he began creating still lifes as early as 1759. In 1771 he was awarded a commission from the Prince of Asturias (later Charles IV), an avid amateur of the new...
By juxtaposing pieces from Africa and Oceania selected from private collections with photographs, “Object, Image, Collector” explores the complex intertwining of the histories of these objects, photography, and collecting. Objects from the African continent and the Pacific came to...