Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston houses a comprehensive collection of over 450,000 works of art, making it the 4th largest museum in the United States.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston houses a comprehensive collection of over 450,000 works of art, making it the 4th largest museum in the United States. Spread over 4 floors, the collection comprises works from all around the world spanning from prehistory to the present day.

The Art of the Americas wing showcases a wide-ranging collection of North and South American works. Of note are 18th-19th century works by the likes of John Copley, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and Gilbert Stuart.

• The ground level has an eclectic collection of art from the prehistoric era to the present, including Colombian goldwork, Andean textiles, Mayan ceramics, and Native works. It also presents a glimpse of early colonial life in the 17th and early 18th century through portraits, furniture, silver, and textiles. The maritime art gallery is dedicated to ship models.
• Level 1 has colonial American art primarily from New England and the Northeast, post-Revolutionary War works from the US, and colonial Spanish works from Central and South America. Of note are the recreated period rooms of an Oak Hill mansion.
• Level 2 presents 19th to early 20th century art from diverse movements including American Impressionism, Boston School, American Renaissance, Aesthetic Movement, and the Arts and Crafts Movement, as well as folk art. Period rooms from the Roswell Gleason House in Dorchester are also on display.
• Level 3 presents 20th century art through the mid-1970s, including early modernist paintings and works on paper by Stuart Davis and Georgia O’Keeffe, photographs by Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, sculpture and jewelry by Alexander Calder, realist works by Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, and abstract works by Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Adolph Gottlieb. There is also a section devoted to the Jazz Age of the 1920s and ‘30s.

The Evans Wing presents the Art of Europe collection with over 21,000 artworks from the Middle Ages through the mid-20th century. Of particular note are the French impressionist and post-impressionist works by artists such as Paul Gauguin, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, and Cézanne. Highlights include a 14th century gilded triptych by Duccio, Rembrandt’s 'Artist in his Studio', Renoir’s 'Dance at Bougival', Gauguin’s 'Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?' and 'Manao Tupapau', Turner's 'Slave Ship', Degas' 'At the Races in the Countryside' and 'The Little Dancer', and 37 works by Monet including 'Grainstack'. Apart from painting, there are works across other media such as Donatello’s relief of Madonna of the Clouds, a stunning inkstand from Paris by Crossville and Glachant, the Kunstkammer (Cabinet of Curiosities), Hamilton Palace Dining Room, and the Newland House Drawing Room furnished in period style.

The Behrakis Wing exhibits Art of the Ancient World, a stupendous collection of antiquities with more than 85,000 works of art from Egypt, Nubia, the Near East, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, and Anatolia, spanning from 6500 BC to 600 AD. Artifacts include sculpture, jewelry, coffins, mummies, coins, weapons, architecture, vases, carved gems, musical instruments, and mosaics. Of particular note are Old Kingdom Egyptian artifacts including sculptures, sarcophagi and jewelry, Nubian art of all periods, Greek vases, coins and gems, and Roman funerary art.

The Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art displays art created after 1955 by artists from around the world, including El Anatsui, Lynda Benglis, Anish Kapoor, Kathy Butterly, and John Cederquist.

The 'Art of Asia, Oceania, and Africa' Wing has artifacts from Japan, China, Korea, South and Southeast Asia, and the Islamic world from 4000 BC onwards, along with African and Pacific art from the 16th to 20th centuries. It has the largest collection of Japanese works outside Japan, and an important collection of Chinese painting, calligraphy and imperial Chinese art.