�������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��

Upcoming Exhibitions and Galleries

Current Exhibitions

Please contact Public Relations to verify titles and dates before publication: pr@mfa.org.

Upcoming Exhibitions and New Galleries

Georgia O'Keeffe and Henry Moore

Ann and Graham Gund Gallery
October 13, 2024–January 20, 2025

American painter Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) and British sculptor Henry Moore (1898–1986) are among the most distinctive artists of the 20th century. They have long been admired for their extraordinary distillations of natural forms into abstraction—O’Keeffe’s iconic paintings of flowers and Moore’s monumental public sculpture. This major exhibition is the first to bring these two artists into conversation, using compelling visual juxtapositions to explore their common ways of seeing. Each artist experimented with unusual perspectives, shifts in scale, and layered compositions to produce works that were informed by their surroundings—O’Keeffe in New Mexico and Moore in Hertfordshire, England.

Though both O’Keeffe and Moore remained within reach of city life, the two artists worked in rural settings, where they amassed large personal collections of animal bones, stones, seashells, and other natural materials that served as key sources of inspiration. Featuring more than 150 works, "Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore" includes paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, as well as faithful recreations of each of the artists’ studios containing their tools and found objects. The studio installations illuminate the heart of their artistic practice—something rarely made visible in museum spaces—and create richer portraits of O’Keeffe and Moore by encouraging visitors to imagine how they worked and lived.

Organized by the San Diego Museum of Art, the exhibition is an unprecedented collaboration with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the Henry Moore Foundation. In addition to about 90 works by Moore and 60 by O’Keeffe, the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s presentation draws upon the Museum’s modernist collection to put O’Keeffe and Moore in dialogue with other mid-20th century artists active in the U.S. and in Europe—among them Edward Weston, Barbara Hepworth, Arthur Dove, and Jean Arp—all of whom engaged with creating abstraction from nature.

Power of the People: Art and Democracy

Rabb and Foster Galleries, 155 and 156
October 26, 2024–February 16, 2025

Opening against the backdrop of the 2024 US presidential election, “Power of the People: Art and Democracy” highlights the ways in which art has played a role in shaping ideas about democracy throughout history and how artists have asked citizens to contemplate democracy’s merits, participate in its practice, and call for improvements. Through 175 works of art, drawn almost entirely from the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s collection and ranging in time from democracy’s origins in ancient Greece to today, visitors can compare past to present and reflect on how certain democratic struggles and concepts have echoed through the ages.

The exhibition features celebrated works, such as the American Revolutionary War–era Sons of Liberty Bowl (1768) by Paul Revere Jr. and Shepard Fairey’s poster series We the People—Are Greater Than Fear (2017), along with lesser-known but influential works of art on view for the first time, including Cyrus Dallin’s 1912 marble relief portrait of Julia Ward Howe, and a French Revolution–era porcelain sundial featuring the new calendar.

With ceramics, coins, inscriptions, paintings, sculpture, prints, photographs, posters, fashion, and more, “Power of the People” invites visitors to reflect on, discuss, create, and participate in the democracy we share.

Deep Waters: Four Artists and the Sea

Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries (Gallery 332)
November 9, 2024–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.

Huntington Avenue Entrance Commission: The Knowledge Keepers

Huntington Avenue Entrance
Opens November 14, 2024

For the inaugural “Huntington Avenue Entrance Commission,” the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ�� invited internationally recognized artist Alan Michelson (b. 1953) to create monumental works for the two empty plinths outside the Museum’s historic building. Entitled The Knowledge Keepers, Michelson’s installation forms, in part, a challenging response to Appeal to the Great Spirit, a sculpture by Cyrus Dallin that has stood at the center of the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s entrance plaza since 1912. Michelson, a Mohawk member of Six Nations of the Grand River who was raised in Boston and attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, sources from both Indigenous and Western cultures to create works in a varied range of media and materials. His multivalent practice includes award-winning public art, and his work has been recently featured in the Tate Modern, MoMA PS1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Gwangju Biennale.

“I’m honored to be the artist chosen to inaugurate the ‘Huntington Avenue Entrance Commission,’” said Michelson. “In 1909, when Cyrus Dallin cast Appeal to the Great Spirit in Paris, the image of the noble but defeated Plains warrior as an exemplar of the ‘vanishing race’ was popular worldwide. In 2024, I hope my site-specific installation will challenge ingrained stereotypes and racial myths by presenting a story of survivance and agency, not defeat or appeal, and I thank the Museum for supporting this work.”

This is the first of a new series of annual commissions that engages artists to create site-specific artworks for the Museum’s Huntington Avenue Entrance. It is part of a broader initiative to activate the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ�� campus, which has included outdoor film screenings and installations such as “Garden for Boston” (2021), led by artists Ekua Holmes and Elizabeth James-Perry (Aquinnah Wampanoag). The Knowledge Keepers also forms part of the Boston Public Art Triennial, a citywide project launching May 2025 with many other institutions around Greater Boston participating.

Robert Frank: Mary's Book

Herb Ritts Gallery (Gallery 169)
December 21, 2024–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 �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’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.

Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson

Lois B. and Michael K. Torf Gallery (Gallery 184)
February 8–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 �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ�� 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 �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’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.”

Wilson’s influence and impact on artists and community remains deep across Boston, especially in the neighborhood of Roxbury. These ties are explored further through community involvement in the exhibition planning process, the accompanying publication, and public programs that will take place during the run of the exhibition.

Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits

Ann and Graham Gund Gallery (Gallery LG31)
March 30–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.

�������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��ors can see approximately 20 works by Van Gogh, including the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’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, chosen or observed. 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 �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ�� Publications.

Current Exhibitions

Toshiko Takaezu: Shaping Abstraction

Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries
through September 29, 2024

Born in Hawaii to immigrant parents from Okinawa, Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011) was a technically masterful and innovative artist best known for her ceramic sculptures, which she treated as abstract paintings in the round. Her gestural style, distinctive palettes and complex layering of glazes align with the practices of Abstract Expressionists who were her contemporaries. Yet, Takaezu introduced an added element of chance as her pieces only revealed their final colors after firing. She often showed her ceramics in groups, sometimes with her equally innovative paintings and textiles, in carefully constructed arrangements that responded to their environment. This exhibition takes inspiration from these displays, tracing Takaezu’s development from potter to multimedia installation artist.

The �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ�� holds a significant collection of Takaezu’s pottery—more than 20 examples are featured here alongside loans from private collections. Highlights also include a large-scale weaving that has been recently acquired by the Museum and a grouping of works that explores the artist’s cross-cultural interactions with contemporary Japanese ceramicists during her pivotal eight-month trip to Japan in 1955–56. In conjunction with the exhibition, an additional display in the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art juxtaposes Takaezu’s work with that of her longtime friend, the sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

Challenging traditional presentations of American abstraction, the exhibition celebrates the extraordinary range of Takaezu’s work—aiming to make her contributions more widely known.

Supported by the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Exhibition Fund, The Amy and Jonathan Poorvu Fund for the Exhibition of Contemporary Art and Sculpture, and the Eugenie Prendergast Memorial Fund.  

The exhibition would not have been possible without the collaboration of the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation and The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum. The Noguchi Museum has organized a major touring retrospective, Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within, which will open in New York in March 2024 and will travel nationally through 2026.

Ancestors and Place: Indigenous North American Prints

Edward and Nancy Roberts Family Gallery (Gallery LG26)
through October 14, 2024

The words ancestors and place have many connotations, but for Indigenous peoples, they are tied to all things. Place extends beyond a single location to encompass land, water, and sky. Ancestors are those not only human, but nonhuman too, that are living elements of a place. Some Native artists have used the collaborative medium of printmaking as a way of honoring these deeply connected concepts and reminding us that, though many Indigenous ancestral lands were lost to colonization, relationships to these places and the communities they nurtured endure.

Celebrating a growing area of the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s collection, “Ancestors and Place: Indigenous North American Prints” features more than 30 works—most of them recent acquisitions—by Indigenous artists from the United States and Canada that explore nuanced ideas of stewardship. The works recognize place as a blessing but also something to take care of—for the past, present, and future. Mostly created through residencies at print studios such as Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Tamarind Institute, and High Point, these prints show artists pushing their practices into new directions, experimenting with and reconceptualizing subjects significant to them and their communities.

Both emerging and established artists are featured, including Wendy Red Star, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, James Lavadour, and Raven Chacon. Beyond making art, some, like Smith, are also activists, driven by a desire to improve cultural and political representation for Native Americans. Rooted in their specific communities, these prints demonstrate the creativity and experimentation of diverse contemporary artists.

This exhibition is organized in collaboration with artist and professor Duane Slick (Meskwaki/Ho-Chunk). It follows a previous exhibition of Indigenous North American prints, which explored resilience, on view between November 2023 and March 2024.

Community Arts Initiative: Our Family Portrait

Edward H. Linde Gallery (Gallery 168)
through October 27, 2024

For Our Family Portrait, Boston-based artist Timothy Hyunsoo Lee (American, born Seoul, 1990) guided more than 150 students through creating cyanotype prints representing their biological and chosen families. This exhibition brings their works together into a large-scale installation in the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art—a reflection of the students’ communities and a celebration of the diversity of faces and voices contained within.

The group’s creative process began with considering relevant artworks within the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s collection, including family portraits by Rembrandt van Rijn, William Matthew Prior, and Erastus Salisbury Field as well as a contemporary sculpture by Lucia Hierro. The students then learned to make cyanotypes—one of the earliest forms of photography, which produces distinctive blue-toned prints. Their collaborative artwork—the culmination of meaningful conversations and art-making workshops that took place over several months—is displayed alongside several works from the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s contemporary collection and two new examples by Lee. To represent the idea of home as a landscape as well as the community shared between families and friends, David Hockney’s Garrowby Hill (1998) will hang with portraits by Charles Allston and Alice Neel. Several works of contemporary American, Japanese and Korean ceramics and glass will also complement a focus on the transmission of craft traditions across time and continents.

Our Family Portrait marks the 19th year of the Community Arts Initiative, through which the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ�� 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 12 community organizations including Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC), the Boys & Girls Clubs of Dorchester, Sociedad Latina, United South End Settlements (USES), West End House Boys & Girls Club of Allston-Brighton, and Vine Street Community Center. Additionally, we are also proud to partner with six of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston: Berkshire Partners Blue Hill Boys & Girls Club, Charlestown Boys & Girls Club, Edgerley Family South Boston Boys & Girls Club, Gerald and Darlene Jordan Boys & Girls Club, Orchard Gardens Boys & Girls Club, and the Yawkey Boys & Girls Club of Roxbury.

Born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in New York City, Lee is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores the relationship between bodies, borders and rituals. He references legacies of history and tradition and often subverts their presentation through queer abstractions and other forms of deterioration. In addition to Our Family Portrait, Lee’s work is featured in the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s exhibition Hallyu! The Korean Wave.

Thinking Small: Dutch Art to Scale

William A. Coolidge Gallery (The Center for Netherlandish Art’s Gallery for Innovative Scholarship, Gallery 243A)
through November 3, 2024

A collaboration between the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s Center for Netherlandish Art and the Yale University Art Gallery, Thinking Small: Dutch Art to Scale explores an intriguing selection of objects from the 17th-century Netherlands that were designed to elicit slow, intimate and contemplative engagement on the part of their original audiences. With objects drawn from rich collections across Yale’s campus as well as the CNA, the exhibition compels viewers to reconsider their relationship to the world around them.

Four Womxn: New Musings on Blackness

Lizbeth and George Krupp Gallery (Gallery 264)
through November 18, 2024

Inspired by “Four Women,” Nina Simone’s 1966 song of archetypes and stereotypes bestowed upon Black women, this exhibition explores those ideations and connections that transcend geography, age, class, sexuality, and artistry. Through poetry and film, four artists employ a balance of historiography and the radical imaginary to critique tropes and envision an end to the erasure of Blackness.

Grounded in a Black lesbian gaze, Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola’s Twerk Villanelle (2019) engages visitors textually in the space. Video installations by Shanequa Gay, Le’Andra LeSeur, and C. Rose Smith continue, each evaluating the different experiences of Black womxn. Gay’s The Crooked Room (2018) combines distorted video and photography to convey the unsettling and unifying state of living in the United States as a Black women. In White Out (2018), LeSeur examines the effect of navigating a world dominated by predominantly white spaces on Black queer womxn like herself. Influenced by contemporary fashion, queer theory and 19th-century photography, Smith’s Untitled no. 000 (2020) considers how a white cotton dress can signify hierarchy, ethics, and control.

By reinventing conventional art forms, these contemporary artists reclaim the entirety of their stories, producing new primary sources of visual, material, and textual culture.

Barbara Bosworth: The Meadow

Herb Ritts Gallery (Gallery 169)
through December 1, 2024

In 1996 artist Barbara Bosworth (b. 1953) began photographing a meadow in Carlisle, Massachusetts, just northwest of Boston. Returning regularly over the next 15 years, she used a large-format camera to capture images of the land at different times of day and in all seasons. Through the resulting series of photos, called The Meadow, Bosworth carries on a long-standing tradition of New England artists, poets, and naturalists who have chronicled the passage of time and traces of human presence in beautiful yet quietly unspectacular landscapes like this one.

Featuring a dozen large-format color photographs as well as several small contact prints, this exhibition gives visitors a glimpse into Bosworth’s unique and evolving vision of the meadow. Although seemingly humble and unassuming, the area, as rendered patiently through Bosworth’s lens, reveals a rich diversity of life—from an ever-changing expanse of sky above to a profusion of native ferns, flowers, fireflies, lichen, mushrooms, caterpillars, apple trees, and even ants below.

Together with her friend, writer Margot Anne Kelley, Bosworth invited scientists, urban foragers, archeologists, and local historians on walks through the meadow. With the help of their expertise she came to better understand the land that provided her subject matter. The meadow is located in a part of Carlisle that once was Concord (founded in 1635), and stands not far from the Concord River. Originally called Musketaquid—meaning “marsh grass river” in the Algonquian language—the area was hunted, fished, and cultivated by Native peoples for thousands of years. European settlers gradually transformed the landscape into farming fields and pastures but, more recently, some of it, including the meadow, has been set aside as conservation land protected from development.

Hyman Bloom: Landscapes of the Mind

Clementine Brown Gallery (Gallery 170)
through December 1, 2024

In 1955 Hyman Bloom (1913–2009) began visiting the small town of Lubec, Maine—at that time a good ten-hour drive from his home in Boston. Lubec’s unspoiled forests inspired him to draw with ambition, focus, and scale that few of his contemporaries came close to matching. The resulting works reveal a desire to capture the primal character of the wilderness—its life cycle of birth, death, and transformation—as well as a pervading mysticism and belief in nature’s correspondence to the psyche.

“Hyman Bloom: Landscapes of the Mind” invites visitors into the artist’s imagination to experience nature as he did. Focused on Bloom’s drawings, the works on view brilliantly communicate volume, shading, light, and line, showing Bloom to be a technically gifted draftsman who holds his own with any other in history. These are not one-to-one copies of what Bloom saw; they pull from memory and photographs he took in the woods, but are essentially colored by a one-of-a-kind creative vision. At once imaginary and real, Bloom’s drawings bring art to life through a distinct and innate ability to conjure the spirit.

Many works in the exhibition are part of a gift from Stella Bloom, the artist’s widow. This transformational gift helps the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ�� in its aspiration to become the collection of record for this important Boston artist.

Dalí: Disruption and Devotion

Lois B. and Michael K. Torf Gallery (Gallery 184)
through December 1, 2024

The outlandish and iconoclastic artist Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) is famous for his bizarre imagery and distinctive Surrealist vision. He was, however, also deeply rooted in tradition. Dalí studied, emulated, and indeed revered his European predecessors from centuries past, embracing influences from Spain, the Low Countries, and Italy throughout his long career.

Dalí: Disruption and Devotion juxtaposes nearly 30 paintings and prints on loan from the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, with European masterpieces from the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s collection, including portraits, religious scenes, and still-lifes by El Greco, Orazio Gentileschi, and Velázquez, among others. In addition to these illuminating pairings, the exhibition features some of Dalí’s best-known works, such as Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1952–54). Other examples reveal optical illusions and double images—hallmarks of Surrealism—while the monumental Ecumenical Council (1960) highlights Dalí’s technical mastery. By seeing him in dialogue with great painters and printmakers who came before him, visitors can experience a unique take on one of the most celebrated avant-garde artists of the 20th century.

Tender Loving Care: Contemporary Art from the Collection

Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, Level 2
through July 28, 2025

At their core, creating and looking at works of art are acts of care, from the artist’s labor to the viewer’s contemplation and appreciation. Storage, conservation, and display are also ways of tending to art. This exhibition invites visitors to explore how contemporary artists trace and address concepts of care through their materials, subjects, ideas and processes.

Around 100 works from the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s collection define, depict, and demonstrate many forms of care through five thematic groupings: threads, thresholds, rest, vibrant matter, and adoration. Gisela Charfauros McDaniel’s portrait of her mother, Tiningo’ si Sirena (2021), moves between intimacy and an attentiveness to larger concepts that are meaningful to the artist, like cultural inheritances and ecological interconnectivity. For his Sound Suit (2008), Nick Cave extended the lifespan of discarded objects by transforming them into a surreal, otherworldly costume that asserts the value of Black life. The intensive time and labor that goes into creating textiles and fiber art is evident in examples by Sheila Hicks, Howardena Pindell and Jane Sauer. Through these works and many others visitors can consider how different forms of care may inspire new models for living and feeling—now and in the future.

Beyond Brilliance: Jewelry Highlights from the Collection

Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Family Foundation Gallery (Gallery 104)
Opened May 2024

Celebrating the universality of body adornment throughout the ages and across cultures, this newly renovated gallery presents highlights from the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’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 �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’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.

French Salon Gallery

Elizabeth Parke Firestone and Harvey S. Firestone, Jr. Memorial Room (Gallery 141A)
Opened August 2022

The newly renovated French Salon provides an opulent setting for nearly 100 highlights from the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s Elizabeth Parke Firestone and Harvey S. Firestone, Jr. Collection of French silver. This “period room” cannot in fact be pinned down to one specific period—an in-depth restoration campaign that began in 2018 yielded a stunning finding that half of the space dates to 18th-century France and the other half to early 20th-century New York. Installed in thematic groupings throughout the room, the silver objects on view include works made for royal, domestic and ecclesiastical purposes—showcasing the craftsmanship of silversmiths who worked in Paris and provincial French cities from the late 16th through the early 19th centuries.

Perhaps even more than other decorative arts objects, silver works carry with them physical evidence of their creation and subsequent lives. The raw material of silver is evident, and the signs of the many hands that processed it still remain: stamped marks tell the story of the artists, the tax collectors who evaluated quality, and the town guild where the pieces were made. In some instances, subsequent owners have engraved their coats of arms, inventory numbers or initials. An in-gallery video explores one incredible object in particular—an exquisite sauceboat by the star Parisian silversmith in mid-18th century, François-Thomas Germain—tracing its fascinating history from the mining of raw material in South America to the creation of the piece in France.

The salon itself, which entered the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s collection nearly 100 years ago, is also presented as a museum object. An in-gallery video traces its evolution from France, to New York, where it was part of a Fifth Avenue mansion owned by businessman William Salomon, to Boston.

With gratitude to Elizabeth Parke Willis-Leatherman for her generous support of the renovation of this gallery. 

Art of the Italian Renaissance Galleries

(Gallery 141, 141B)
Opened August 2022

Two newly renovated, light-filled spaces present a new vision of the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s collection of Italian Renaissance art, bringing together approximately 90 paintings, sculptures, ceramics, furniture and objects made for use in the home, including several recent acquisitions. The first gallery considers a variety of themes through object groupings: the meanings of antiquity for Renaissance artists, viewers and patrons; technical innovations and materials; the role of storytelling and the variety of narrative formats in Renaissance art; and the everyday lives of men and women. The second gallery explores the interweaving of religion and art, presenting works ranging from small-scale devotional paintings to larger-scale works including Rosso Fiorentino’s masterpiece The Dead Christ with Angels (about 1524–27). Together, these spaces convey the complexity, variety, creativity, spirituality, self-definition and curiosity that drove the making and appreciation of works during the Italian Renaissance—a period that continues to inspire and resonate with many today.

The renovation of these galleries is made possible with generous support from Emi M. and William G. Winterer, the Thompson Family Foundation, and an anonymous donor. Additional support from Tamara Petrosian Davis and Charles Howard Davis II.

Intentional Beauty: Jewish Ritual Art from the Collection

Bernard and Barbara Stern Shapiro Gallery (Gallery 231)
Opened December 2023

Bringing together nearly 30 works from the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’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.

Stories Artists Tell: Art of the Americas, the 20th Century

Art of the Americas Wing, Level 3
Ongoing

A new reinstallation of the third floor of the Art of the Americas Wing presents modern art from North and South America beyond the standard boundaries of geography, time and artistic movements. Stories Artists Tell: Art of the Americas, the 20th Century takes the form of an anthology, with each room offering a short story on a different theme—from the perspectives of Native artists in the Southwest to the vibrant connections between art, design and jazz at midcentury. The works are primarily drawn from the �������ϲʿ����ֳ�ֱ��’s collection, with well-known icons appearing alongside new acquisitions and other objects on view for the first time. Stories Artists Tell comprises six galleries that also provide context for a rotating central space, which will feature a series of special exhibitions in the coming years. The first, Touching Roots: Black Ancestral Legacies in the Americas, brings together work by Black artists in the Americas who turned their gaze to Africa to find grounding, strength and guidance, and gained insight into their identities, aesthetics and artistic practices.

Hank Willis Thomas: Remember Me

Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, Level 2
Ongoing

Hank Willis Thomas (born 1976) probes the visual culture of identity, history, social justice and popular media through conceptual art. His multimedia installations invite viewers to consider modes of systemic oppression and explore the depths of collective memory. These two installations, which source imagery from photography and archival materials, reframe historical iconography to resonate with contemporary audiences and propose constructive, collaborative, reparative futures.

Inspired by an antique postcard of a young Black man—possibly a World War I veteran—holding a rifle, Remember Me (2022) memorializes the strength, courage, and forgotten legacies of rural African Americans in the early 20th century. It replicates, as a large illuminated neon sign, the words handwritten on the back of the postcard: “Remember me.” Thomas encountered the source object at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut.

“…but by the content of their character” (Test pattern) (2020) also deals with memory, imagery and race. This work is one of several Thomas has made by placing a UV print on retroreflective vinyl, creating rainbow-hued vertical bands reminiscent of a TV test pattern. Viewers must move through space for the reflective photographic image to become visible. In this specific iteration of the series, Thomas spotlights an iconic image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Flash photography further activates the image—inviting visitors to participate in image making.

Where Remember Me memorializes an unidentified figure one would not expect to find in textbooks or in movies, “...but by the content of their character” (Test pattern) features an iconic image of a widely known civil rights activist at a key, defining moment. Both works prompt perspectival shifts, asking audiences to reflect on the process of storytelling and history’s biases in a call to action.

This installation is presented in conjunction with the unveiling of The Embrace, a new memorial in the Boston Common honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King’s commitment to racial equity. The Embrace was designed by Thomas and the MASS Design Group and commissioned by Embrace Boston, the Boston Foundation and the Collection of the City of Boston.