Upcoming Exhibitions and Galleries

Current Exhibitions

Please contact Public Relations to verify titles and dates before publication: [email protected].

Upcoming Exhibitions and New Galleries

Qi Baishi: Inspiration in Ink

Asian Paintings Gallery (Gallery 178)
May 3–September 28, 2025

Living in a time of civil and political turmoil, Qi Baishi (1864–1957) was renowned for his modernization of Chinese ink painting. Conveying rural sentiments with bold landscapes, lifelike animals and plants, and lively and amusing figures, Qi’s paintings of mundane objects and everyday life broke social and cultural barriers. His innovative experiments included the juxtaposition of vibrant colors against rich ink tones, a pronounced economy of form and composition, and vivid representations with revealing inscriptions. He also revitalized Chinese painting with expressive brushwork based on his calligraphic practice and seal carving. Qi is credited with transforming the traditional brush art of China’s educated elite into an expressionistic and abstract form that speaks clearly to the modern era.

Marking the 160th anniversary of Qi’s birth, this exhibition features nearly 40 works from the artist—almost all on loan from the Beijing Fine Art Academy—and offers a rare opportunity to examine the breadth of his artistic vision and inspiration.

The Visionary Art of Minnie Evans

Edward and Nancy Roberts Family Gallery (Gallery LG26)
May 10–October 26, 2025

Over half a century, American artist Minnie Evans (1892–1987) created thousands of radiant and kaleidoscopic works of art inspired by vivid dreams and local landscapes in her native Wilmington, North Carolina. These imaginative, intricately detailed drawings and paintings merged her own inner world—her religious beliefs, interest in mythology, and study of history—with the natural environment that surrounded her.

The Visionary Art of Minnie Evans features 16 multimedia works by Evans—all on loan from the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington—and contextualizes them with handwritten letters, postcards, and other ephemera to illuminate the artist’s complex and profoundly spiritual relationship to nature in her hometown.

Growing up in the American South during the Jim Crow era, Evans heard family stories about her ancestors’ experiences of enslavement in the forests of Eastern North Carolina. These coastal woodlands later provided refuge to Black community members during the Wilmington white supremacist coup of 1898, the only successful coup d’état in United States history. During this violent overthrow of the city’s elected mixed-race government, thousands of Black residents fled into the surrounding forests for safety. A reporter at the time described faces peering out from the trees and foliage—an image that became a motif in Evans’s art. In her work, these watchful eyes at once evoke communal memories of the deadly insurrection and the surveillance of enslavement, and also reflect Evans’s faith in nature as divine protection.

Throughout her artistic career, Evans held day jobs in the city’s outlying green spaces—first at Pembroke Park and later at Airlie Gardens, where she worked as a gatekeeper for 26 years. The botanical symmetry and vibrant colors of Airlie’s lush setting enveloped her and inspired her art, which she made in the gatehouse and sold for modest sums.

These intimate yet expansive compositions—often suggestive of Wilmington’s environmental features and interwoven with transcendent visions of disembodied eyes, mythical creatures, and otherworldly angels—invite visitors to consider how personal experiences, shared histories, and spiritual practices shape the ways we see and respond to the natural world around us.

Community Arts Initiative: Into the Forest 

Edward H. Linde Gallery (Gallery 168)
May 16–October 26, 2025

For Into the Forest, Boston-based artist Szu Chieh-Yun (b. 1988) has guided more than 170 students through an exercise in world-building focused on nature and landscapes. Through experimental drawing, painting, and collage sessions, students were empowered to imagine their own path in life using the forest as a metaphor. The resulting exhibition brings their work together into a large-scale collaborative mural installation in the MFA’s Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art.

Into the Forest marks the milestone 20th anniversary for the Community Arts Initiative, through which the MFA partners with community organizations to introduce young people ages six to 12 to the Museum’s collection and the art-making process, while also helping them understand how art can be an important part of their lives. For this exhibition, through the Community Arts Initiative, the Museum is proud to partner with Berkshire Partners Blue Hill Boys & Girls Club, Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, Charlestown Boys & Girls Club, Boys & Girls Clubs of Dorchester, Edgerley Family South Boston Boys & Girls Club, Jordan Boys & Girls Club, Orchard Gardens Boys & Girls Club, Sociedad Latina, United South End Settlements, Vine Street Community Center, West End House Boys & Girls Club of Allston-Brighton, and Yawkey Boys & Girls Club of Roxbury.

Rachel Ruysch: Artist, Naturalist, and Pioneer 

Lois B. and Michael K. Torf Gallery (Gallery 184)
August 23–December 7, 2025

In the still life paintings of Dutch artist Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), floral bouquets appear alive and rich with movement: petals and stems droop and rise and colorful lizards crawl across stone ledges set against dark backgrounds. These astonishing displays, rendered with a skill that eclipsed many of her male contemporaries, earned Ruysch fame across Europe in her lifetime—an era when few women attained artistic prominence.

Rachel Ruysch: Artist, Naturalist, and Pioneer is the first comprehensive solo exhibition dedicated to the artist. It brings together 35 of her finest paintings from museums and private lenders across the United States and Europe alongside plant and insect specimens as well as work by other female artists, including Anna Ruysch, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Alida Withoos. Seeing these provocative juxtapositions, visitors can gain insight into the central role women played in the production of scientific knowledge in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries.

As global trade routes expanded in the 17th century, thousands of new plant specimens arrived in the Netherlands for cultivation in greenhouses and botanical gardens. Ruysch was among the first artists to introduce new species, from passionflowers to cacti, into her flower still lifes. Merging art and science, these paintings are far from just decorative; they’re riddles, hints of a deeper understanding of the natural world. They speak of survival and loss, the delicate balance between beauty and violence, and the deeper narratives of colonial expansion unfolding beneath the surface. Visitors are invited to celebrate the beauty of Ruysch’s work while discovering the hidden stories woven within.

This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, and the Toledo Museum of Art. Scientific content was developed in collaboration with Charles Davis, professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University.

Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor

Ann and Graham Gund Gallery (Gallery LG31)
November 2, 2025–January 19, 2026

American artist Winslow Homer (1836–1910) transformed the medium of watercolor through his relentless spirit of experimentation. His luminous views transport viewers to the rugged Maine coast, the Adirondack Mountains, seaside England, sun-drenched Caribbean waters, and beyond. The MFA houses the largest collection of Homer’s watercolors in the world, though the works’ fragility and sensitivity to light means they have not been displayed together in nearly half a century.

This exhibition brings dozens of the MFA’s Homer watercolors back into the galleries for a new generation to experience, alongside a selection of related oils, drawings, and prints by the artist. With material ranging from Homer’s childhood drawings all the way to his final canvas, left unfinished at the time of his death, visitors can follow the major chapters in his career and learn about the various environments—ecological, artistic, social, and economic—that shaped his enduring work in watercolor.

Born in Boston, Homer had a long relationship with New England and the MFA, which was one of the first museums to acquire a painting by the artist, Fog Warning (1885), in 1894. The first watercolor, Leaping Trout (1892), came into the collection soon after, and over the 20th century the Museum amassed almost 50 watercolors and 11 oil paintings by Homer, creating one of the most significant collections of Homer’s work across media.

Writer Henry James famously described Homer as an artist “who sees everything at once with its envelope of light and air”—a fitting description of a painter who utilized the unique qualities of watercolor to capture the ephemeral, fleeting nature of his subject matter. From the serene waters in his iconic The Blue Boat (1892) to the drama of Breaking Wave (Prout’s Neck) (1887), “Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor” invites visitors to celebrate the artist’s mastery of the medium and the innovative techniques he pioneered.

The exhibition is accompanied by a forthcoming book from MFA Publications.

Current Exhibitions

Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson

Lois B. and Michael K. Torf Gallery (Gallery 184)
through June 22, 2025

Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, John Wilson (1922–2015) is one of Boston’s most esteemed artists. His work, made over the span of 60 years, continues to resonate with the persistent realities of disenfranchisement, racial prejudice, and social injustice.

Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson is the largest-ever exhibition of Wilson’s work, co-organized by the MFA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Featuring approximately 110 works by the artist in a wide range of media—paintings, sculptures, prints, illustrated books, and drawings—the exhibition explores the many ways Wilson called attention to racial, social, and economic injustices through his art.

Challenging both prejudices and omissions, Wilson explored subjects that include anti-Black violence, the civil rights movement, labor, and family life—with a particular focus on fatherhood. Portraits like Julie and Becky (1956–78) and his Young Americans (about 1972–75) suite of life-sized portraits celebrate the essential humanity of Wilson’s family and friends, while other works like Deliver Us from Evil (1943) and The Trial (1951) depict the heinous impact of systemic prejudice and racism. Wilson’s work speaks to shared experiences, while also displaying his personal search for identity as an artist, Black man, parent, and American.

A significant number of the works in the exhibition are drawn from the MFA’s collection, including a number of early self-portraits and depictions of Martin Luther King, Jr. The centerpiece of the Boston presentation of Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson is a reduced-scale bronze maquette for Eternal Presence, the monumental sculpture installed in 1987 on the grounds of the National Center of Afro-American Artists (NCAAA) in Roxbury. Fondly called the “Big Head” by many local residents, the colossal sculpture was described by Wilson as “an image of universal dignity.”

As an artist and teacher, Wilson’s generosity as a mentor and dedication to producing positive changed inspired generations of art students in Boston. His impact on the city is explored further through community involvement in the exhibition planning process, the accompanying publication, and public programs that take place during the run of the exhibition.

Robert Frank: Mary's Book

Herb Ritts Gallery (Gallery 169)
through June 22, 2025

Celebrating the centennial of photographer Robert Frank’s (1924–2019) birth, this exhibition features the personal scrapbook he made for his first wife, titled Mary’s Book. Created in 1949 for Mary Lockspeiser, the album consists of 74 small photographs with Frank’s written inscriptions. They reveal his appreciation for the poetic resonance of objects and spaces. Many of the photographs are devoid of people, although their presence is felt everywhere. He muses on the chairs and streets of Paris with messages interspersed for Mary. The book is a reflection on solitary contemplation that reads like a lyrical poem and compelling personal photographic sequence.

This one-of-a-kind, handmade album represents a formative moment in Frank’s career as he experiments with text and image juxtaposition. Robert Frank: Mary's Book includes a selection of spreads from the scrapbook in the Museum's collection as well as photographs Frank took in Paris, on loan from the artist’s foundation.

A publication based on the exhibition will be published in early 2025, written by Kristen Gresh, the MFA’s Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs and Stuart Alexander, a Robert Frank scholar. This is the first time Mary’s Book will be fully reproduced.

Landscape and Labor: Dutch Works on Paper in Van Gogh’s Time

Clementine Brown Gallery (Gallery 170)
through June 22, 2025

Although Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) is today perhaps the most famous Dutch artist of all, in his own time he was relatively little known, especially when compared to artists of the Hague School. This group, named for the city where many of its members trained and worked, was comprised of those who had different styles but shared a devotion to the depiction of everyday life, looking to the Dutch countryside for their subjects and themes. The Hague School artists achieved international fame, and in the early 1900s US collectors and museums—including the MFA—eagerly sought their works. But over the decades the group’s fame faded.

Landscape and Labor: Dutch Works on Paper in Van Gogh’s Time presents the Hague School at its best. Visitors can see watercolors, prints, and drawings by artists such as Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch (1824–1903), Anton van Rappard (1858–1892), and Anton Mauve (1838–1888). Though they are not now household names in the United States, these figures had a profound impact on the artists of their time and future generations. Mauve, in particular, played a key role in Van Gogh’s early life and career. Van Gogh himself is also represented here, with two early works.

The Hague School artists focused on farmers, fisherfolk, laborers, mills, canals, and dunes as their subjects, in part to convey a patriotic love of the countryside. In the densely populated and rapidly industrializing Netherlands, rural subjects recalled a simpler time and a simpler way of life—both of which were quickly disappearing. This exhibition shines a light once more on a neglected group of artists who, working in a changing time, captured vanishing ways of life using modern artistic styles as their tools.

Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits

Ann and Graham Gund Gallery (Gallery LG31)
through September 7, 2025

Between 1888 and 1889 during his stay in Arles, in the south of France, Vincent van Gogh (1853–90) created a number of portraits of a neighboring family—the postman Joseph Roulin; his wife, Augustine and their three children: Armand, Camille and Marcelle. Van Gogh’s tender relationship with the postman and his family, and his groundbreaking portrayals of them, are at the heart of this exhibition, which is the first dedicated to the Roulin portraits and the deep bonds of friendship between the artist and this family.

Visitors can see more than 20 works by Van Gogh, including the MFA’s iconic portraits Postman Joseph Roulin (1888) and Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse) (1889) as well as important loans from museums such as the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Museum of Modern Art in New York and Metropolitan Museum of Art. Additionally, key works of earlier Dutch art and Japanese woodblock prints—both of which profoundly informed Van Gogh’s portrait practice—along with new scientific findings provide critical insight into elements of the artist’s creative process, from his painterly touch to his choice of materials. Letters written by Postman Roulin bring to life the deep bond of friendship and a major turning point in Van Gogh’s life, as he moved to a new city and grappled with his mental health. He dreamed of creating a vibrant community of artists in Arles, which led to a visit by fellow painter Paul Gauguin, whose work is included here.

Despite imagining himself as a husband and father, Van Gogh never married or had children. As he came to terms with this, he found comfort in his relationship with the Roulins; his portraits of them capture an intimacy that resonates across place and time in families of all kinds—biological or chosen. This exhibition gives visitors the most in-depth look yet at the emotional underpinnings of some of the beloved artist’s most widely recognized paintings.

Organized in partnership with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits is accompanied by a forthcoming catalogue from MFA Publications. Relying on letters from the artist, archival material, contemporary criticism, and technical studies, the catalogue features insightful essays on Van Gogh’s practice, his beliefs about portraiture, his personal relationship with the Roulins, and his admiration for his contemporaries as well as 17th-century Dutch portraitists.

Deep Waters: Four Artists and the Sea

Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries (Gallery 332)
through November 9, 2025

Generations of artists have explored the beauties and terrors of the ocean, reflecting on the experiences of those who have lived and died among the waves. Weaving together artworks by four artists made over centuries and across the Atlantic, this exhibition follows a genealogical thread united by the sea. Echoes of John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark (1778) reverberate in J. M. W Turner’s 1840 Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), which itself has influenced art created in the 21st century.

Presented here for the first time in New England, John Akomfrah’s iconic three-channel film installation Vertigo Sea (2015) expands on the themes at the heart of the two earlier works, exploring humanity’s tumultuous relationship with the sea and its creatures, and the ocean’s role in the history of slavery. In Some People Have Spiritual Eyes I and II (2020), photographer Ayana V. Jackson takes these ideas in a new direction. Jackson’s exploration of divinity, femininity, and destiny through self-portraiture is inspired by Drexciya, a mythical aquatic utopia populated by descendants of the pregnant African women who lost their lives in the Atlantic Ocean during the Middle Passage.

“Deep Waters: Four Artists and the Sea” invites visitors to consider and reflect on the conversation between these works of art and their makers. Each artist offers a unique perspective drawn from their lived experience, yet all are attuned to the poetics and histories of the sea—from its glittering surfaces and unfathomable depths to its inhabitants and ghosts; from it as a site of memory, mourning, and fragility to a symbol of resilience and possible futures.

Rituals for Remembering: María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Ana Mendieta

Henry and Lois Foster Gallery (Gallery 158)
through February 15, 2026

This exhibition brings together works from the MFA’s collection by María Magdalena Campos-Pons (b. 1959) and Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) in the first focused look at these influential artists side by side. Though the two never met, their practices share a reckoning with displacement and exile from their homes in Cuba, a deep reverence for the land, and a transformative use of natural elements like water, earth, and fire. For both artists, memory, ritual, and spirituality animate their artworks across photography, film, video, drawing, sculpture, installation, and performance.

Central to the exhibition—and on view at the MFA for the first time—is Campos-Pons’s major installation A Town Portrait (1994), created in collaboration with Neil Leonard, from her series History of a People Who Were Not Heroes. A multimedia work in red clay, glass, and steel that evokes the structures, landscape, and legacies of the colonial sugar industry, A Town Portrait materializes family memories in what the artists calls a “counter-history” and “a monument to the history of every single Black family in Cuba.” It joins prints and expressive photography by the artist in an exploration of her practice over decades, with special emphasis on the nearly 30 years she lived and worked in Boston, between 1991 and 2017.

For Mendieta, performance and photography were one way to merge existence with the land, in what she termed “earth-body” artworks. Several examples from Mendieta’s influential Silueta series (1973–80) are on view, exploring the impression of her body on shorelines, in grassy fields, and in conversation with universal cycles of growth and decay. As both Campos-Pons and Mendieta faced disconnection from their homes and families, they also found ways to remain connected to their pasts in their new environments.

Counter History: Contemporary Art from the Collection

Charlotte F. and Irving W. Rabb Gallery (Gallery 155)
Opened April 15, 2025

How do we remember the past, and how does it inform the present? Artists often question our shared history as they frame ways for us to understand it differently. This new installation of works from the MFA’s collection of contemporary art—including many new acquisitions—offers multiple possibilities to reconsider the past through the art of our time.

Three interrelated thematic sections make up this impactful display. “Monuments” focuses on the ways artists use grand scale, references to painful histories, and images of power and control to speak to collective memory and immortalize the past. As much as museums, libraries, and other repositories officially serve to document the past, many other ways of recording history—from ephemeral chronicles to spoken word, for example—present themselves in “Unofficial Archives.” By documenting injustices, repression, and state violence through individual experience, the work in “Counter Histories” stands against official narratives, as artists aim to set the record straight.

Over several planned rotations, the installation brings together more than 70 artists and 140 artworks. Longtime highlights of the collection by artists such as Mark Bradford, Jeffrey Gibson, Mona Hatoum, Jasper Johns, Alice Neel, Kiki Smith, and Andy Warhol are placed in dialogue with emerging practices and fresh acquisitions by Dana Chandler Jr., Sharon Hayes, Steve Locke, Laurel Nakadate, Tammy Nguyen, and Avery Singer.

Huntington Avenue Entrance Commission: The Knowledge Keepers

Huntington Avenue Entrance
Opened November 14, 2024

Western artists have frequently depicted Indigenous subjects as exotic, anonymous figures frozen in time and represented in poses of subjugation, violence, or reverie. By contrast, Alan Michelson’s The Knowledge Keepers represents two contemporary local Indigenous cultural stewards, Aquinnah Wampanoag member Julia Marden and Nipmuc descendent Andre StrongBearHeart Gaines Jr., posed in dynamic gestures of public address. Michelson’s project is the first in a new series of sculptural commissions for the MFA’s Huntington Avenue Entrance, where contemporary artists engage the site in all of its complexity.

Cast in bronze and gilded in shimmering platinum, The Knowledge Keepers pays tribute to the Northeastern Woodland nations’ reverence for copper, crystal, shell, and silver, materials treasured for both their physical and metaphorical luster. Platinum, with its resistance to corrosion, chemical stability, and role in advanced electronics and spacecraft, translates that tradition into the future.

Marden, an artist and specialist in twining, crafts all of her own regalia. She raises a turkey feather fan in a gesture of honor. Gaines, an Indigenous activist, public speaker, and builder of wetus (traditional homes) and mishoonash (dugout canoes) reads from a page of text in the classical pose of an orator. Michelson’s selection of them as models emphasizes their roles as cultural models. By extension, The Knowledge Keepers seeks to honor and celebrate the beauty, presence, agency, and endurance of the Indigenous nations of Massachusetts.

Beyond Brilliance: Jewelry Highlights from the Collection

Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Family Foundation Gallery (Gallery 104)
Ongoing

Celebrating the universality of body adornment throughout the ages and across cultures, this newly renovated gallery presents highlights from the MFA’s renowned jewelry collection. From ancient artifacts to fine jewelry to designs made by contemporary artists, the presentation connects objects that span 4,000 years by exploring how jewelry can communicate strong messages about its wearer and exemplify the art and culture of its time.

More than 150 objects are on display, including an ancient Egyptian broad collar necklace; 19th-century works by Castellani and Carlo Giuliano; 20th-century designs by Marcus & Co., Tiffany & Co., and Bulgari; René Boivin’s starfish brooch from 1937; and fashion jewelry by Chanel, Dior, and Elsa Peretti. New acquisitions of contemporary jewelry by Christian and Yasmin Hemmerle, Wallace Chan, Anna Hu, and Feng J are also featured.

Championing the breadth and depth of the MFA’s collection, “Beyond Brilliance: Jewelry Highlights from the Collection” features both humble and exquisite objects that together illustrate the timeless human desire to self-fashion, collect, and create.

Intentional Beauty: Jewish Ritual Art from the Collection

Bernard and Barbara Stern Shapiro Gallery (Gallery 231)
Ongoing

Bringing together nearly 30 works from the MFA’s collection of Jewish ritual art, or Judaica—most of which are new acquisitions on view for the first time—this gallery explores the splendor of items made for Jewish religious experience, at home and in the synagogue. Treasures of all kinds are on view: metalwork, textiles, paintings, furniture, and works on paper. Created across the centuries, they originate from places as far reaching as Asia, North Africa, Europe, and the United States. Though their meaning and use have always been intrinsically Jewish, their styles and techniques vary greatly, reflecting the artistic language of their surrounding cultures.

With lavish reliefs, engravings, and enamel and niello adornments, a Torah shield by Elimelekh Tzoref of Stanislav (Galicia, modern-day Ukraine) (1781–82) is one of the finest in existence. Its remarkable ornamentation and craftsmanship reflect the importance of the Torah scroll—the handwritten text of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible—in Judaism. Constructed to house the scroll at the now-defunct Shaare Zion Synagogue in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a Torah ark by woodcarver Samuel Katz (about 1920) is rooted in local history: it tells a story about immigration to Boston and the many changes and challenges Jews from the area faced in the early 20th century.

Contemporary works from the United States and Israel, such as kiddush cups, candlesticks, and spice boxes used in the observation of Shabbat, offer innovative takes on Judaica for the home. Older items—including a wood and silver Torah case from Baghdad (modern-day Iraq) (1879) and used in Calcutta, India—act as tangible testimonies to their communities’ histories. Taken together, these objects draw connections that offer a deeper understanding of Jewish values, traditions, and identity across time and geography.

"Intentional Beauty: Jewish Ritual Art from the Collection" is sponsored by the David Berg Foundation. Additional support provided by Lorraine Bressler, the Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Family Foundation, Inc., Lisbeth Tarlow and Stephen Kay, and The Priebatsch Family Fund, in loving memory of Norman Priebatsch. With special gratitude to Marcia and Louis Kamentsky and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.