How do you start writing a paper, an e-mail, or a letter? Often our first thoughts are not the final product we want other others to read. Instead we…

Issue: Reflections from the Center for Netherlandish Art Fellows

“We weep with the weeping, laugh with the laughing, and grieve with the grieving. These movements of the soul are made known by movements of the body…

Issue: Reflections from the Center for Netherlandish Art Fellows

Painted around 1609, Peter Paul Rubens’s portrait of Mulay Ahmad depicts an African man from the waist up, standing before a city and a massive…

Issue: Reflections from the Center for Netherlandish Art Fellows

Last July my friend Griffin visited me in Boston. I couldn’t wait to update them on everything new and exciting in my life. First we visited the MFA…

Issue: Art for This Moment

The MFA has one of the most comprehensive collections of Japanese art anywhere in the world. Reimagined galleries explore Japan’s art and visual…

At four years old I saw my first ballet, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, and I immediately fell in love with dance. By age six I was taking my first…

Issue: Art for This Moment

Whether it comes from the T lurching over an antiquated track or a toy in the hands of my hyperactive niece, rattling is a constant sound in my life…

Issue: Art for This Moment

The quilt atop my childhood bed has given warmth to me and three generations of women in my family. Its lace overlay has torn, its doily appliqué has…

Issue: Art for This Moment

Dearest Sofonisba, I don’t know you. We’ll never meet. I live almost 500 years after you, in a world you wouldn’t recognize. I’m in my 20s; you lived…

Issue: Art for This Moment

Jewish communities around the world have long believed that beauty has the power to enhance ritual practice. According to the principle of Hiddur…