boston museum of fine arts

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, and contains the second largest permanent museum collection in the Western Hemisphere, after the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The museum was founded in 1870 and its current location dates to 1909. In addition to its curatorial undertakings, the museum is affiliated with an art academy, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and a sister museum, the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in Nagoya, Japan. The current director of the museum is Malcolm Rogers.

History

The Museum was founded in 1870 and opened in 1876, with a large portion of its collection taken from the Boston Athenaeum Art Gallery. Originally located in a red Gothic Revival building on Copley Square in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, it moved to its current location on Huntington Avenue, Boston's "Avenue of the Arts," in 1909.

The museum's present building was commenced in 1907, when museum trustees hired architect Guy Lowell to create a master plan for a museum that could be built in stages as funding was obtained for each phase. The first section of Lowell’s neoclassical design was completed in 1909, and featured a 500-foot façade of cut granite along Huntington Avenue, the grand rotunda, and the associated exhibition galleries. Mrs. Robert Dawson Evans then funded the entire cost of building the next section of the museum’s master plan. This wing along the Back Bay Fens, opened in 1915 and houses painting galleries. From 1916 through 1925, John Singer Sargent created the art that lines the rotunda and the associated colonnade. Numerous additions enlarged the building throughout the years including the Decorative Arts Wing in 1968 and the Norman Jean Calderwood Garden Court and Terrace in 1997. This wing now houses the museum's cafe, restaurant, and gift shop as well as exhibition space.

Recent expansion

Recently, the museum embarked on a major renovation project. This includes the construction of a new wing for the arts of the Americas, redesigned and expanded education facilities, and extensive renovations of its European galleries, visitor services, and conservation facilities.

The new wing is was designed in a restrained, contemporary style by the London architectural firm of Foster and Partners, under the directorship of Lord Norman Foster. Groundbreaking for the addition took place in 2006. In the process, the present garden courtyard will be transformed into a climate-controlled year-round glass enclosure. Landscape architects Gustafson Guthrie Nichol[1] have designed new entries, gardens, access roads, and interior courtyards.

Collection and exhibits

Some highlights of the MFA's collection include:

• Egyptian artifacts including sculptures, sarcophogi, and jewelry.
• French impressionist works including Paul Gauguin's Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?) as well as works by Manet, Renoir, Degas, Monet, and others.
• 18th and 19th century American art, including many works by John Singleton Copley and John Singer Sargent.
• the Morse collection of 5,000 pieces of Japanese pottery, part of the largest museum collection of Japanese works outside of Japan.
• the Gund Gallery which hosts temporary exhibits while a Japanese garden provides a quiet, contemplative space outside the museum itself.
• frequently hosted special exhibits, the most popular one being the Monet show in 1998, which attracted over 565,000 visitors.

The Museum also maintains one of the largest on-line art catalogs in the world at http://www.mfa.org, with information about over 327,000 items from its collection available on-line, many with an accompanying photograph.

As a result of the ongoing expansion of the museum, a number of standing exhibits are still in storage.

Notable curators

• Fitzroy Carrington (born 1869) Curator of prints
• Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908) - Curator of Oriental Art (1890-1896)
• Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) - Curator of Oriental Art

Visiting

Admission to the museum is charged at most times, but there is free admission on Wednesdays after 4 p.m. As of December 2005, the Museum is open until 9:45 p.m. on Wednesdays.