http://www.mfa.org Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Exhibitions and Events Calendar en-us Copyright 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Wed, 12 Jul 2006 05:00:00 EST Museum Museums Art webmaster@mfa.org webmaster@mfa.org http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 60
One-hour tours, given by Museum-trained guides, feature masterpieces from the collections.
Location: Sharf Visitor Center
Tickets: Free with Museum admission.
Click here for details
(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]> The splendid material from Tomb 10A on view in the Gund Gallery represents what the Djehutynakhts thought they needed for the afterlife. But it also reveals a lot about their life on earth. Join exhibition curator Rita Freed, John F. Cogan Jr., and Mary L. Cornille Chair, Art of the Ancient World, as she reconstructs what life would have been like for a wealthy estate owner and governor of 2000 BC.
Location: Remis Auditorium
Tickets: This event is free and open to members on a first-come, first-served basis; accompanying guests are admitted subject to the admission privileges of your membership. Tickets are available on the day of the program at any ticket desk. FM assistive-listening devices are available at Remis Box Office.
Click here for details
(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
One-hour tours, given by Museum-trained guides, feature masterpieces from this collection.
Location: Sharf Visitor Center
Tickets: Free with Museum admission.
Click here for details
Related Collection: Art of Asia, Oceania and Africa
(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
One-hour tours, given by Museum-trained guides, feature masterpieces from this collection.
Location: Sharf Visitor Center
Tickets: Free with Museum admission.
Click here for details
Related Collection: Art of Europe
Language: English
(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]> Join us for InsideOut, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's celebrated annual sale. See thousands of pieces of fine art from one of the best art schools in the country—student pieces intermingled with works by SMFA alumni and affiliated artists including Mike and Doug Starn, Nan Goldin, and Ellsworth Kelly, among others. Don't miss this rare opportunity to see such a large breadth of original work. You'll find paintings, photographs, prints, sculpture, new media, and more. Besides being an exclusive opportunity to add these works to your collection, InsideOut is the largest fundraiser for the SMFA. Every purchase supports scholarships, making it possible for students to forge new directions in art. For more information about InsideOut, call 617-369-3204 or e-mail insideout@smfa.edu.
Location: School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Click here for details
(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
One-hour tours, given by Museum-trained guides, feature masterpieces from this collection.
Location: Sharf Visitor Center
Tickets: Free with Museum admission.
Click here for details
Language: English
(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
One-hour tours, given by Museum-trained guides, feature masterpieces from this collection.
Location: Sharf Visitor Center
Tickets: Free with Museum admission.
Click here for details
Related Collection: Art of the Ancient
Language: English
(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
One-hour tours, given by Museum-trained guides, feature masterpieces from the collections.
Location: Sharf Visitor Center
Tickets: Free with Museum admission.
Click here for details
Language: English
(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
Big Man Japan (Dai-Nipponjin) by Hitoshi Matsumoto (2007, 113 min). A “bizarre send-up of classic monster movies” (Sacha Howells, film.com), cameras follow Daisato, a hero who grows to the size of a skyscraper after he is blasted with volts of electricity. As he goes about his daily routine, a voice-over prompts his ruminations on cats. While his monster-fighting predecessors were seen as saviors, Daisato is thought of as a noisy nuisance who destroys buildings. A mockery of kaiju—Japanese “strange beast” movies—Big Man Japan (Dai-Nipponjin) uses juvenile humor to portray the sad existence of Daisato.
Location: Remis Auditorium
Tickets: Members, seniors, and students $8; general admission $10
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(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]> Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives by Rob Epstein (1978, 133 min). The first feature-length documentary about lesbian and gay identity—made by gay filmmakers—startled audiences across the country when it appeared in movie theaters and on TV in 1978. The film brought mainstream attention to gay rights issues and became an icon of the emerging movement of the 1970s. The 26 interview subjects want desperately to be part of society as they grapple to understand why they have to fight for approval. The original film negative was recently restored, and we’re proud to present the re-mastered 35 mm print. Co-presented by the Boston LGBT Film Festival.
Location: Remis Auditorium
Tickets: Members, seniors, and students $8; general admission $10
Click here for details
(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
Scottish artist Jim Lambie is the third artist to participate in the series RSVPmfa, in which the Museum invites artists to consider the extraordinary collections, architecture, and grounds that comprise the Museum of Fine Arts as a background for the installation of their work. Lambie transforms ordinary objects—vinyl tape, turntables, speakers, doors, mirrors, clothing, chairs—that he finds on the street or buys in secondhand and hardware stores into vibrant sculptures and site-specific installations. Lambie champions sensory pleasure over intellectual response, approaching his work with a simplicity and straightforwardness of form and material. "I'm not an information artist, I'm not like a schoolteacher, I'm just working with materials," says Lambie, who experiments with space and form in a way that breaks with traditional notions of elegance, deploying humble materials to create objects and installations that challenge the high-tech, high-brow aesthetics common to much of contemporary art and design. Lambie redefines the shapes and relationships of the materials he uses without veering too far away from simply letting them be what they are. Like music, which serves as an artistic model for him, Lambie’s art fills its surroundings and transforms the environment: "You put a record on, and it’s like all the edges disappear. You’re in a psychological space. You don’t sit there thinking about the music, you’re listening to the music. You’re inside that space that the music’s making for you." In Jim Lambie’s hands, ordinary objects are transformed into powerful, enigmatic, and compelling environments where the edges disappear and the space he makes is for you. This exhibition made possible by The Contemporaries, whose generous donations directly support the Museum's Department of Contemporary Art. Read the Boston Globe article about the installation.
Location: Cohen Galleria
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(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
As part of celebrating the renovation and re-opening of the State Street Corporation Fenway Entrance, this exhibition tells the story of the Museum's history, its architecture, and its vital role as a community resource and partner. Rarely seen historic photographs, paintings, sculpture, archival documents, and architectural fragments bring the long and distinguished history of the MFA to life for a new generation. The exhibition, on view in the Lower Hemicycle, opens with the founding of the MFA in 1870 and documents the first Museum building in Copley Square, as well as the many expansions and renovations to the Museum's present home on Huntington Avenue, which opened in 1909. It also explores current and future building plans, including the transformative project underway now and the recent acquisition of the Forsyth Institute building.
Location: Lower Hemicycle
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(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>

Technology has rendered music more accessible and pervasive than ever before. MP3 players are omnipresent; every cell phone can make a statement about the owner's musical taste. Music is everywhere, and in the process has become both more public and more private. We all travel through life with our own soundtrack—sometimes others can hear it; sometimes it's ours alone. Visual artists, however, have been inspired by music throughout history. They have responded by transforming something that is arguably intangible, into visual, physical form. "Seeing Songs" presents an eclectic mix of work—mainly from the Museum's collections—that draws on music as inspiration, focusing on abstract as well as representational art and connections to musical forms as varied as classical, jazz, and pop. From lyrical works on paper by Wassily Kandinsky and a painting by Stuart Davis that depicts music as gesture and improvisation, to recent videos by Gillian Wearing and Candice Breitz that explore the relationship between pop stars and their fans, this exhibition brings together an international group of artists in whose work we see songs.
Location: Foster Gallery
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(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
Look back to the glorious past of the ancient Japanese imperial capital of Kyoto, originally called Heian-kyō, as it was envisioned by artists of the ukiyo-e school working many centuries later in the city of Edo (modern Tokyo). The exquisitely refined court culture of the Heian period (794-1185), named for the city, and the flamboyant urban popular culture of the Edo period (1615-1868), the Floating World (ukiyo), are playfully juxtaposed in prints, paintings, and book illustrations that implicitly compare the commoners of early modern Edo to the lords and ladies of ancient Heian-kyō: the beautiful poet Ono no Komachi, the ardent lover Ariwara Narihira, the fictional paragon Prince Genji, and many more. The greatest classics of courtly literature were presented visually in serious, straightforward versions; in modern updates; and even in humorous parodies. These vivid images helped to make the heritage of classical Japanese literature not just the property of a small group of aristocrats, but part of a national culture shared by all social classes. “Echoes of Heian-Kyō: Court Culture in the Floating World” is the third in our series of exhibitions (along with “Celebrating Kyoto: Modern Arts from Boston’s Sister City,” on view through September 7, 2009, and the past exhibition “Visions of Kyoto: Scenes from Japan’s Ancient Capital”) commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the sister city relationship between Boston and Kyoto.
Location: Japanese Woodblock Prints Gallery
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(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
Using selections from the Museum’s collection of Persian paintings for inspiration, Conley Harris, an artist and collector of Indian and Persian art, has created six interpretative works depicting a continuing theme in Persian paintings: animals and landscape. Displayed beside the Museum’s 15th- through 17th-century paintings in the Islamic Corridor, “Glorious Beasts in Persian Paintings” emphasizes unique aspects of Persian painting including history, techniques, and traditions. Responding to a 16th-century manuscript depicting a hunting scene, Harris created High-spirited Horseman, shown above, a vibrant painting intended to “simultaneously evoke the original’s elegance and designed confusion…Everything is layered, all the colors are heightened and the action blurred by the raging chaos of battle.”
Location: Islamic Corridor
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(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
The Carpenter gallery is usually home to Chinese paintings, of which the Museum of Fine Arts holds one of the world’s great collections. The current exhibition is a departure. It does feature some Chinese paintings, but it also includes works from Tibet. Since the fourteenth century, Chinese and Tibetan art have engaged in a vigorous and mutually sustaining dialogue, each side learning from and influencing the other. "Tibet/China Confluences" explores that dialogue. Tibetan paintings first appeared in China in large numbers during the fourteenth century. Their vibrant colors, intense imagery, and bold compositions attracted Chinese viewers, and Chinese painters began to borrow aspects of Tibetan style. In turn, Tibetan painters emulated the sensitive naturalism of the Chinese tradition—botanical paintings and landscapes in particular. The resulting works are sometimes called "Sino-Tibetan" or "Tibeto-Chinese," reflecting the fact that the traditions are often so closely interwoven as to constitute new, hybrid styles. With support from the June N. and John C. Robinson Fund for Chinese Paintings in Honor of Marjorie C. Nordblom
Location: Carpenter Gallery
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(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
Just as the stories of many No plays—peopled with historic and legendary figures, gods, spirits, and ghosts—are drawn from the classical literature of the Heian (794–1185) or Kamakura (1185–1336) periods, the robes worn by the actors recall court costumes of the Nara (710–794) and Heian periods, which were made of sumptuous woven silks imported from China. Many Chinese symbols, motifs, and repeat patterns, along with Chinese weaving technology, were adopted by Japanese craftsmen during these same periods. Although heavy woven silks and formal patterns borrowed from China—such as the "seven jewels" design and karahana (Chinese flower) motif—gradually fell out of fashion for everyday wear, they continued to be used for No costumes, as a means of evoking the spirit of the distant past and the refinement of early court culture. The silks used for some robes continued to be imported from China, or closely modeled on Chinese examples, while Japanese weavers developed other imported weave structures, such as the weft-patterned silk called karaori ("Chinese weave"), into a sophisticated and distinctly Japanese artistic expression. This exhibition highlights No robes from the 18th to early 20th centuries from the MFA's collection, some of which have never before been exhibited. It explores how "Chinese" designs and weaves have been employed, adapted, and combined with "native" Japanese motifs in No costume over the centuries, along with the dramatic and symbolically meaningful role such robes would play in the context of a No performance.
Location: Compton Gallery
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(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
More than 400 years ago, Japan forged strong trading partnerships with China and the West, and Japan’s lacquer and porcelains were among the most sought-after luxuries in the world. Although Japan largely closed itself to the West around 1640 to preserve domestic stability, Chinese and Dutch merchants were allowed to trade goods through a network that extended down the Asian coast to Islamic ports, around Africa, and then to Europe. The Japanese frequently created items specifically tailored to aristocratic European tastes for ornamentation in royal palaces and stately homes—exquisite blue-and-white and enameled porcelains, as well as sumptuous mother-of-pearl inlaid lacquers. However, Japan also imported luxuries. Practitioners of chanoyu (popularly known as the tea ceremony), for example, treasured ceramics and textiles from China, Korea, Vietnam, and Southeast Asia. Presenting works from several private collections and from the Museum’s own holdings, “Luxuries from Japan” explores these dynamic intercultural exchanges that shaped the creation of Japanese works of art during the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
Location: Compton Gallery
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(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
Members' Preview Days October 14-17 In a 1915 excavation, archaeologists from the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition discovered the entrance to a tomb at the picturesque site of Deir el-Bersha in Egypt. Inside, the MFA team found, in jumbled array, the largest burial assemblage of the Middle Kingdom (2040-1640 BC) ever discovered. The tomb, designated Tomb 10A, was filled with the funerary equipment of a local governor by the name of Djehutynakht and his wife, also named Djehutynakht. Robbers had stolen the finest jewels but left everything else, including the severed (but nicely wrapped and painted) head of one of the Djehutynakhts. The tomb contained four beautifully painted coffins, one of which (detail, shown above), the famous "Bersha coffin" (the outer coffin of the governor), is arguably the finest painted coffin Egypt produced and a masterpiece of panel painting. The tomb also included Djehutynakht’s walking sticks, pottery, canopic jar, and miniature wooden models that were made for the burial but reflect life on Djehutynakht’s estate, including some 58 model boats and nearly three dozen models of daily life such as individual shops for carpenters, weavers, brick-makers, bakers, and brewers. Of these, the best known is the exquisitely carved "Bersha procession" of a male priest leading female offering bearers. The contents of Djehutynakht’s tomb were awarded to the MFA by the Egyptian government and transported to Boston in 1920. En route, they nearly met with disaster when the ship that was carrying them caught fire. Thankfully, the crew averted disaster, and the material suffered only slight water damage. Following their arrival in Boston, the Museum put the Deir el-Bersha coffin and procession on view in the galleries, but most of the other objects have never been displayed before. Many of the models, in fact, were never fully conserved prior to the preparations for this exhibition. "The Secrets of Tomb 10A: Egypt 2000 BC" introduces visitors to the concepts of the afterlife in the Middle Kingdom by taking a journey through the remarkable tomb of the Djehutynakhts and its many objects. It also offers an opportunity to gain insight into the fascinating era in which the couple lived by viewing sculptures, jewelry, furniture and other objects representing high officials of their time.
Location: Gund Gallery
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(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
Nagoya and Boston Exchange Artwork This exhibition marks the sixth annual exchange between young people in Nagoya, Japan, and Boston. This unique project links young audiences and celebrates the international partnership between the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. As of this year, nearly seven hundred children have participated in the exchange. The result was a collaborative artwork. Students enrolled in the MFA’s Studio Art Class Program and Vacation Journeys through Art and children from a Nagoya summer art program that is part of the Aichi Children’s University all created shadow pictures. Inspired by the traveling exhibition "Worshipping Love: Mighty Aphrodite," the students in Japan explored the idea of "what/who I think is beautiful." In Boston, the children made a "Museum menagerie" drawing from the bountiful collection of animal images in the MFA’s collection. The resulting artwork was shown at the Nagoya/Boston Museum during the summer of 2009 before traveling to the MFA for this exhibition on view in the Courtyard Gallery. Japanese translation
Location: Education Foyer
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(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>
“Bharat Ratna,” which translates literally to the “Jewel of India,” presents a selection of outstanding works by some of India’s most celebrated modern painters. Drawn from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Rajiv Jahangir Chaudhri, the exhibition focuses on a generation of artists that emerged in the years following India’s independence from British rule in 1947. Luminaries such as Francis Newton Souza, Maqbool Fida Husain, and Sayed Haider Raza—founding members of the Progressive Artists Group—formed an important and influential artistic avant-garde at this transitional moment in India’s history. Their paintings are an international synthesis of visual traditions, embracing western modernism on the one hand and a heritage colored by the rich narrative of Indian art, myths, and classical traditions on the other. The divergent works in “Bharat Ratna! Jewels of Modern Indian Art” highlight the fascinating dialogue and mediation between the traditional and modern, the indigenous and foreign, and the sacred and secular as Indian artists sought an independent identity that could define their country’s new nationhood.
Location: Indian Paintings and Decorative Arts Corridor
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(c) 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ]]>