Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The original Museum of Fine Arts building in Copley Square.

The Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1870 and was initially located on the top floor of the Boston Athenaeum and most of its initial collection came from the Athenæum's Art Gallery.[3] Francis Davis Millet, a local artist, was instrumental in starting the Art School affiliated with the museum, and in appointing Emil Otto Grundmann as its first director.[4] In 1876, the museum moved to a highly ornamented brick Gothic Revival building designed by John Hubbard Sturgis and Charles Brigham, noted for its massed architectural terracotta. It was located in Copley Square at Dartmouth and St. James Streets.[3] It was built almost entirely of brick and terracotta, which was imported from England, with some stone about its base.[5] After the MFA moved out in 1907, this original building was demolished, and the Copley Plaza Hotel (now the Fairmont Copley Plaza) replaced it in 1912.[6]

In 1907, plans were laid to build a new home for the museum on Huntington Avenue in Boston's Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood, near the recently opened Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Museum trustees hired architect Guy Lowell to create a design for a museum that could be built in stages, as funding was obtained for each phase. Two years later, the first section of Lowell's neoclassical design was completed. It featured a 500-foot (150 m) façade of granite and a grand rotunda. The museum moved to its new location later in 1909.

The second phase of construction built a wing along The Fens to house paintings galleries. It was funded entirely by Maria Antoinette Evans Hunt, the wife of wealthy business magnate Robert Dawson Evans, and opened in 1915. From 1916 through 1925, the noted artist John Singer Sargent painted the frescoes that adorn the rotunda and the associated colonnades.

The Decorative Arts Wing was built in 1928, and expanded in 1968. An addition designed by Hugh Stubbins and Associates was built in 1966–1970, and another expansion by The Architects Collaborative opened in 1976. The West Wing, now the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, was designed by I. M. Pei and opened in 1981. This wing now houses the museum's cafe, restaurant, meeting rooms, classrooms, and a giftshop/bookstore, as well as large exhibition spaces.

Tenshin-en, the museum's Japanese garden

The Tenshin-En Japanese Garden designed by Kinsaku Nakane opened in 1988, and the Norma Jean Calderwood Garden Court and Terrace opened in 1997.[7][3]

In the mid-2000s, the museum launched a major effort to renovate and expand its facilities. In a seven-year fundraising campaign between 2001 and 2008 for a new wing, the endowment, and operating expenses, the museum managed to receive over $500 million, in addition to acquiring over $160 million worth of art.[8]

During the global financial crisis between 2007 and 2012, the museum's annual budget was trimmed by $1.5 million. The museum increased revenues by organizing traveling exhibitions, which included a loan exhibition sent to the for-profit Bellagio in Las Vegas in exchange for $1 million. In 2011, Moody's Investors Service calculated that the museum had over $180 million in outstanding debt. However, the agency cited growing attendance, a large endowment, and positive cash flow as reasons to believe that the museum's finances would become stable in the near future.

In 2011, the museum put eight paintings by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Gauguin, and others on sale at Sotheby's, bringing in a total of $21.6 million, to pay for Man at His Bath by Gustave Caillebotte at a cost reported to be more than $15 million.[9]

On March 12, 2020, the museum announced that it would close indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All public events and programs are canceled until August 31, 2020. No date for reopening has yet been decided. [10]

The renovation included a new Art of the Americas Wing to feature artwork from North, South, and Central America. In 2006, the groundbreaking ceremonies took place. The new wing and adjoining Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Family Courtyard (a bright, cavernous interior space) were designed in a restrained, contemporary style by the London-based architectural firm Foster and Partners, under the directorship of Thomas T. Difraia and CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares Architects. The landscape architecture firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol redesigned the Huntington Avenue and Fenway entrances, gardens, access roads, and interior courtyards.

The wing opened on November 20, 2010 with free admission to the public. Mayor Thomas Menino declared it "Museum of Fine Arts Day", and more than 13,500 visitors attended the opening. The 12,000-square-foot (1,100 m²) glass-enclosed courtyard now features a 42.5-foot (13.0 m) high glass sculpture, titled the Lime Green Icicle Tower, by Dale Chihuly.[11] In 2014, the Art of the Americas Wing was recognized for its high architectural achievement by the award of the Harleston Parker Medal, by the Boston Society of Architects.

In 2015, the museum renovated its outdoors Japanese garden, Tenshin-en. The garden, which originally opened in 1988, had been designed by Japanese professor Kinsaku Nakane. The garden's kabukimon-style entrance gate was built by Chris Hall of Massachusetts, using traditional Japanese carpentry techniques.[12][13]

The collection of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts is the largest in the world outside of Japan. Anne Nishimura Morse, the William and Helen Pounds Senior Curator of Japanese Art oversees 100,000 total items[20] that include 4,000 Japanese paintings, 5,000 ceramic pieces, and over 30,000 ukiyo-e prints.[21][22]

The base of this collection was assembled in the late 19th century through the efforts of four men, Ernest Fenollosa, Kakuzo Okakura, William Sturgis Bigelow, and Edward Sylvester Morse, each of whom had spent time in Japan and admired Japanese art.[20][23] Their combined donations account for up to 75 percent of the current collection.[20] In 1890, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston became the first museum in the United States to establish a collection and appoint a curator specifically for Japanese art.[21][24]

Another notable part of this collection is a number of Buddhist statues. In the later Meiji Era of Japan, around the turn of the 20th century, government policy deemphasizing Buddhism in favor of Shintoism and financial pressures on temples resulted in a number of Buddhist statues being sold to private collectors. Some of these statutes came into the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts.[25][26] Today, these statues are the subject of preservation and restoration efforts, which have been at times viewable by the public in special exhibits.[26][27]

Also important for this collection is the exhibition of its items in Japan. From 1999 to 2018, regular exchange of items was conducted between the Museum of Fine Arts and its sister museum, the now-closed Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts.[21][28] In 2012, the traveling exhibition Japanese Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston visited the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka, and was well received.[20][21][29]

• 
  John Singleton Copley, Paul Revere, 1768
• 
  John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778
• 
  Gilbert Stuart, George Washington, 1796
• 
  Washington Allston, Self-Portrait, 1805
• 
  Charles Bird King, Still Life on a Green Table Cloth, 1815
• 
  Thomas Sully, The Passage of the Delaware, 1819
• 
  Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1828.
• 
  Fitz Henry Lane, Salem Harbor, 1853
• 
  Martin Johnson Heade, Passion Flowers and Hummingbirds, c. 1870-1873
• 
  William Rimmer, Flight and Pursuit, 1872
• 
  Mary Cassatt, In the Loge, 1878
• 
  Mary Cassatt, Tea, 1880
• 
  John Singer Sargent, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882
• 
  Winslow Homer, The Fog Warning, 1885
• 
  Childe Hassam, At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight), 1886
• 
  John Singer Sargent, Mrs. Fiske Warren (Gretchen Osgood) and Her Daughter Rachel, 1903

• 
  Rogier van der Weyden, Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin, 1435-1440
• 
  Rosso Fiorentino, The Dead Christ with Angels, 1524-1527
• 
  El Greco, Fray Hortensio Félix Paravicino, 1609
• 
  Rembrandt, The Artist in his Studio, 1628
• 
  Rembrandt, Portrait of a 62-year-old Woman, 1632
• 
  Diego Velázquez, Don Baltasar Carlos with a Dwarf, 1632
• 
  Claude Lorrain, Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helion, 1680
• 
  Corrado Giaquinto, Adoration of the Magi, 1725
• 
  Giovanni Paolo Panini, Picture Gallery with Views of Modern Rome, 1757
• 
  Francisco Goya, Seated Giant, 1818
• 
  J.M.W. Turner, The Slave Ship 1840
• 
  Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Bocca Baciata, 1859
• 
  Edouard Manet, Street Singer, 1862
• 
  Henri Regnault, Automedon with the Horses of Achilles, 1868
• 
  Edgar Degas, At the Races in the Countryside, 1869
• 
  Edgar Degas, Racehorses at Longchamp, 1873–1875
• 
  Claude Monet, La Japonaise, 1876
• 
  Paul Cézanne, Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair, 1877
• 
  Auguste Renoir, Dance at Bougival, 1883
• 
  Gustave Caillebotte, Man at His Bath, 1884
• 
  Claude Monet, Poppy Field in a Hollow near Giverny, 1888
• 
  Vincent van Gogh, Postman Joseph Roulin, 1888
• 
  Vincent van Gogh, La Berceuse, 1889
• 
  Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, 1897

• 
  Ramesses III prisoner tiles
• 
  King Menkaura (Mycerinus) and queen, 2490–2472 BCE
• 
  Winged Protective Deity, 883–859 BCE
• 
  Goddess Tawaret, 623–595 BCE
• 
  Marine Mosaic, 200–230 CE

• Emil Otto Grundmann – first Director
• Edward Robinson – second Director
• Arthur Fairbanks – third Director
• George Harold Edgell – fifth Director
• Perry T. Rathbone – sixth Director
• Merrill C. Rueppel – seventh Director
• Jan Fontein – eighth Director
• Alan Shestack – ninth Director
• Morton Golden - interim Director 1993-1994
• Malcolm Rogers – tenth Director
• Matthew Teitelbaum – eleventh Director

• Sylvester Rosa Koehler – first Curator of Prints (1887–1900)
• Ernest Fenollosa – Curator of Oriental Art (1890–1896)
• Benjamin Ives Gilman – Curator (1893–1894?); Librarian (1893–1904); Secretary (1894–1925) Assistant Director, 1901–1903); Temporary Director (1907)
• Albert Lythgoe – first Curator of Egyptian Art (1902–1906)[48]
• Okakura Kakuzō – Curator of Oriental Art (1904–1913)
• Fitzroy Carrington – Curator of Prints (1912–1921)
• Ananda Coomaraswamy – Curator of Oriental Art (1917–1933)
• William George Constable – Curator of Paintings (1938–1957)
• Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule III – Curator of Classical Art (1957–1996)
• Jonathan Leo Fairbanks – Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture (1970–1999)
• Theodore Stebbins – Curator of American Paintings (1977–1999)
• Anne Poulet – Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts (1979–1999)