Be among the first to preview new installations of modern and contemporary art at the MFA. Join curators Claire Howard and Michelle Millar Fisher for a sneak peek and close looking at collection works and recent acquisitions featured in our 20th-century sculpture gallery opening June 2025, and in two highly anticipated displays of contemporary craft, which open in the coming years.

Claire Howard, Hansjörg Wyss Curator of Modern Art
Michelle Millar Fisher, Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts

Explore the latest additions to the MFA’s collection with curators Ethan Lasser and Layla Bermeo, and join them to discuss how the curatorial team is broadening our holdings in preparation for a major reimagining of our first-floor galleries for 18th-century art in the lead up to the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. Learn more about our plans to mark this historic occasion and how our Art of the Americas collection can recount and reflect our country’s history while also inviting us to reconsider it.

Ethan Lasser, John Moors Cabot Chair of the Art of the Americas
Layla Bermeo, Kristin and Roger Servison Curator of Paintings

Hear Nancy Berliner share stories about traveling from village to village and door to door in China in search of colorful patchwork textiles for display in the upcoming exhibition “One Hundred Stitches, One Hundred Villages: The Beauty of Patchwork from Rural China.” View up close examples of this unique and unexplored art form—such as door curtains, bed covers, and children's clothes—that women in China’s rural villages still make for their homes.

Nancy Berliner, Wu Tung Senior Curator of Chinese Art

Engage closely with the world’s largest collection of watercolors by American artist Winslow Homer. These exceptionally fresh and vivid watercolors transport viewers to the rugged Maine coast, the mountains of the Adirondacks, and the bright suns of the Caribbean. Rarely shown due to light sensitivity, the luminous works on paper are the focus of this fall’s major exhibition, “Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor.” Join Christina Michelon, specialist in American prints and drawings, for a glimpse behind the scenes and behind the frames of Homer’s watercolors.

Christina Michelon, Pamela and Peter Voss Curator of Prints and Drawings

Welcome Jared Katz, the Pappalardo Curator of Musical Instruments, and discover what he believes sets the MFA’s Musical Instruments collection apart from those of peer institutions. Jared shares the department’s fascinating history, and employs objects from our comprehensive holdings to celebrate the stories of those individuals who crafted, performed on, composed with, or gifted instruments in the collection. Don’t miss Jared discuss the development of our collection, play selected instruments, and share opportunities for the future of musical instruments within the broad context of a major art museum.

Jared Katz, Pappalardo Curator of Musical Instruments

One of the greatest flower painters of all time, Dutch artist Rachel Ruysch continuously paved new paths for herself and engaged deeply in the rise of natural history as a scientific discipline. Her astonishing and accurate flower still lifes earned the artist—who continued to paint well into her eighties—fame across Europe in her lifetime. This summer the MFA welcomes the traveling exhibition “Rachel Ruysch: Artist, Naturalist, and Pioneer,” which uses new research to highlight and ground this under-recognized artist. Enjoy close looking at related works in our renowned collection of Dutch and Flemish art with curator Antien Knaap and learn more about the upcoming exhibition.

Antien Knaap, Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe