Museum of Fine Arts Developments | Fenway

Overall, how would you rate the MFA? Is it a solid and nice museum? I realize it's not as good as say the Met, but is it one of the better collections in the US?
 
It's certainly up there, probably top five in terms of collection size and significance of assets(at least within the US).
 
I would agree with "top 5" encylopaedic museums, perhaps after the Smithsonian (all the various galleries/museums combined are fairly unbeatable), the Met, Art Institute of Chicago, and maybe Philadelphia or the Getty. One could argue that the Smithsonian and Met are in a class by themselves and then there are about 6 or 7 other museums (including the MFA) that are world class but not really easy to rank relative to one another because they each have such unique holdings.
 
czsz - I spout that line all the time. Obv., not all on display, something like 2% is only in the museum at any one time.

More tomorrow, let me ask the one that knows ...
 
Probably depends on what's being counted. Peabody Essex, which has been collecting longer than the MFA, claimed in 2005 that it had the third largest coillection in North America.

http://www.pem.org/press/press_release/19-fundraising_campaign_for_peabody_essex_museum_exceeds_goal

And oh, .... Henk Willem van Os, the former director of the Rijksmuseum, is giving a talk at the PEM on May 1, on Dutch painting [and how to design galleries for displaying art from the Golden Age]. Bracketed phrase is mine, only to stir the pot. LOL
 
mass88 said:
Overall, how would you rate the MFA? Is it a solid and nice museum? I realize it's not as good as say the Met, but is it one of the better collections in the US?
Click to expand...

Mass -- the statement "I realize it's not as good as say the Met " is not necessarily relevant or correct -- typical NYC attitude -- generally the NYC thing is highly over-rated such as the Philharmonic Hall

When it was first unveiled they (NYCphiiles or phants) were comparing it to Symphony Hall -- of course it turned out that it was an acoustical disaster - -so they tried again and then we were told Avery Fisher's Hall was as good as Symphony Hall -- not by any crediiblle measure

Same with the MET -- of course it is large, but much of it is just the same as say a large version of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford

The MFA on the otherhand has great strenghts in some areas and some weaknesses as well.

In its greatest strength areas --the MFA is either pre-emimnent or at least ranks in the top handful world wide:
1) Asian collection -- under one roof the best in the western world -- parts of the Japan collection would probably been demanded as reparations if WWII had turned-out differently
2) French Impressionists -- the best overall collection outside of France -- particularly Monet and Millet
3) American furniture, silver and other decorative arts -- particularly the unsurpassed colonal New England
4) American art in general -- finally seen in all of its glory in the new wing
5) Old Kingdom Egypt -- the best outside of Cairo
6) Greek pottery painting and much of Greek & Roman portrait marble scultpure -- particularly heads
7) Musical Instruments
8) Prints and Photographs -- very few are on exhibit at any one time
9) Ancient coins -- new gallery coming soon
10) Ancient and more modern jewlery -- one gallery open and another one on the way

That's enough for now --try www.mfa.org/collections

Better yet -- take one of the introduction to the collections 1 hour tours each for:
Asia
Europe
Americas -- not nearly enough time
Ancient World
Contemporary -- still not sure what that means?

much less frequently you can catch some talks on the musical instruments - there are a couple of pieces which are unique
 
Last edited:
whighlander, I suspect the Hermitage has the second best collection of Impressionists outside of France. After my first visit to the Hermitage, I concluded it was second best in nearly everything: second to the Louvre in French paintings, second to the Uffizi for Italian, second to the Prado for Spanish, second to the Rijksmuseum for Dutch. A second-rate museum LOL.
 
Most of the musical instrument talks include a small performance by the curator, and some by local musicians. They are definitely worth checking out if music history is of any interest to you.
 
JohnAKeith said:
czsz - I spout that line all the time. Obv., not all on display, something like 2% is only in the museum at any one time.

More tomorrow, let me ask the one that knows ...
Click to expand...

This always makes me really mad. Large museums acquire so much artwork, but show barely any of it. They may have 200 picassos and only show the top 5, where a smaller museum would kill to be able to put on display even one of the "worst" ones the larger institution has. It just ruffles my feathers that I may never know what great artworks are in the museums basements because some curator doesn't think the works are worthy of being displayed. If you don't want to display it then let someone else have a chance.
 
Not that anyone's counting, but the MFA (still) has a larger contemporary (what ever that means) collection than the ICA.
 
In ten years the ICA will most likely be a forgotten-about eyesore(well, it's already an eyesore). There's only so many finger paintings, household objects and pieces of trash that can pass as art, even to the most baked JP hipsters.
 
^ Ahhh.... the ICA has been around since 1936 and over the course of its time it has done some amazing things like display "Guernica" by Picasso and "The Scream" by Munch, during WWII it had an exhibit of "German degenerate art" saving masterworks by Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, and others from being destroyed, It created and showed the first museum exhibits in America for both Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, it installed the original Robert Indiana "LOVE" statue in City Hall Plaza for a year in the 60's, and it housed the first solo survey of Shepard Fairey ever. These are all major, major events and the new buildings has given the ICA more space to accomplish the ground breaking exhibits they are known for. You might not like the art, but that's what people said when the ICA brought "Guernica" to Boston. I can assure you, the ICA will never be forgotten about.
 
JohnAKeith said:
Not that anyone's counting, but the MFA (still) has a larger contemporary (what ever that means) collection than the ICA.
Click to expand...

What I find really funny is that if you go to the new contemporary galleries at the MFA more than a few of the works they have were actually displayed in shows the ICA put together, then the MFA purchased works. They have Mark Bradfords that were at the ICA during his show, and a sculpture by Roni Horn I saw at the ICA during her solo exhibit. Its like they are just watching the ICA and letting them do all the work then swooping in and buying up what they think is the good stuff.
 
I love the MFA (bought the place I did just so I could be next door) and it does Boston proud, but the thought that it is superior (or even comparable) to the Met is laughable. All museums display a fraction of their collection--MFA is hardly unique in that. All museums also trumpet the "fact" that they have the "best" or "most extensive" or "highest quality" collection of X in the world. None of those are remotely objective measures of quality that will ever be verified (even number of pieces by a single artist is a pretty lame measure--most artists produce dozens of mediocre pieces for every masterpiece they create). If you go by "number of conventionally recognized masterpieces as indicated by books on art history" you would undoubtedly find that the Met, National Gallery, and maybe Chicago far surpass the MFA (a high proportion of the work displayed in the Art Institute is iconic whereas it is much less in the MFA). Ultimately, it can be said that the MFA is one of a handful of truly encyclopaedic museums in the US and it has many fantastic pieces in its collection. Getting in a pissing contest with places like the Met seem like crass boosterism better suited to Atlanta than Boston.
 
I feel the ICA would be far more enjoyable if it devoted more than simply one story to the exhibition of art.
 
Tombstoner said:
I love the MFA (bought the place I did just so I could be next door) and it does Boston proud, but the thought that it is superior (or even comparable) to the Met is laughable. All museums display a fraction of their collection--MFA is hardly unique in that. All museums also trumpet the "fact" that they have the "best" or "most extensive" or "highest quality" collection of X in the world. None of those are remotely objective measures of quality that will ever be verified (even number of pieces by a single artist is a pretty lame measure--most artists produce dozens of mediocre pieces for every masterpiece they create). If you go by "number of conventionally recognized masterpieces as indicated by books on art history" you would undoubtedly find that the Met, National Gallery, and maybe Chicago far surpass the MFA (a high proportion of the work displayed in the Art Institute is iconic whereas it is much less in the MFA). Ultimately, it can be said that the MFA is one of a handful of truly encyclopaedic museums in the US and it has many fantastic pieces in its collection. Getting in a pissing contest with places like the Met seem like crass boosterism better suited to Atlanta than Boston.
Click to expand...

I don't think the MFA dares cross swords with the Met. Chicago? Yes. Getty? Sure. But there's a reason the greatest boast it has is "second largest collection" in the hemisphere...
 
Tombstoner said:
I love the MFA (bought the place I did just so I could be next door) and it does Boston proud, but the thought that it is superior (or even comparable) to the Met is laughable. All museums display a fraction of their collection--MFA is hardly unique in that. All museums also trumpet the "fact" that they have the "best" or "most extensive" or "highest quality" collection of X in the world. None of those are remotely objective measures of quality that will ever be verified (even number of pieces by a single artist is a pretty lame measure--most artists produce dozens of mediocre pieces for every masterpiece they create). If you go by "number of conventionally recognized masterpieces as indicated by books on art history" you would undoubtedly find that the Met, National Gallery, and maybe Chicago far surpass the MFA (a high proportion of the work displayed in the Art Institute is iconic whereas it is much less in the MFA). Ultimately, it can be said that the MFA is one of a handful of truly encyclopaedic museums in the US and it has many fantastic pieces in its collection. Getting in a pissing contest with places like the Met seem like crass boosterism better suited to Atlanta than Boston.
Click to expand...

Tomb -- that sounds like a typical New Yorker atitude. The Met is big -- but by comparison to the British Museum or the Louve its small. Don't know except remotely about the Hermitage -- but it seems very big also. Of course all I believe pale by comparison with the Smithsonian -- but of course it covers everything.

There's an old saying which used to be used to distinguish people from the major Northeatern Cities -- it actually has some significance to it.

In Phily they ask who are his parents, In New York they ask how much is he worh, In Boston they ask what does he know

Thanks to a relatively small number of very knowledgeable collectors and curators and some of the old being at the right place at the right time -- the MFA acquired inteligently and oftern very early in a way most of the other big city big museums didn't and today can't.

For example I wouldn't trade the MFA's Egyptian collection for the Met's or any other US museum. Why -- because of Geoge Reisner's dedication and skill at excavating at Giza and some good arangements with the Egyptian Government as well as the luck of the draw (who got to excavate where and of course what they found). So the MFA has a sculpture of one of Kufu's brothers which looks like it could be from the classical Greek period. It has old kingdom statuary unsurpassed outside of Cairo. Reisner's deal gave any unplundered stuff to Cairo but split plundered stuff equaly between Boston and Cairo and he was doing it for 40 years. Reisner also documented everything and thus the MFA has 40,000 photographs of the excavations. Luck helped as well such as the opportunity to excavate and carry away many wooden fragments from Tomb 10A (perhaps a relative?) in Deir el-Bersha Egypt.-- with a lot of time consuming painstaking restoration work these were transfomed into the amazing collection of models (especially the fleet of boats) and the amazingly painted wooden sarcophagi of Governor and Mrs. Djehutynakhts. This collection along with some suplements mostly from the MFA was dsplayed in a ,most impressive exhibition "Secrets of Tomb10A" which left Boston for a tour -- but now a good suvery of it (including a lot of the boats) is permanently installed just outside the entrance to the Arts of the America's Wing.

from the website
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/secrets-tomb-10a

Inside, the MFA team found, in jumbled array, the largest burial assemblage of the Middle Kingdom (2040-1640 BC) ever discovered. The tomb, designated Tomb 10A, was filled with the funerary equipment of a local governor by the name of Djehutynakht and his wife, also named Djehutynakht. Robbers had stolen the finest jewels but left everything else, including the severed (but nicely wrapped and painted) head of one of the Djehutynakhts. The tomb contained four beautifully painted coffins, one of which (detail, shown above), the famous "Bersha coffin" (the outer coffin of the governor), is arguably the finest painted coffin Egypt produced and a masterpiece of panel painting.
Click to expand...

sc29799.fpx&obj=iip,1.0&wid=568&cell=568,427&cvt=jpeg



Similarly, a couple of collectors and the first curator of Asian Art in the US -- acquired a collection in Japan about 100 years ago that can never be duplicated or even approached by even a bag of money such as the Getty. Indeed when there was a major exhibition celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Dept of Asian Art at the MFA -- the Japanese government sent over some works from the Imperial Palace and several other National Treasures which had never previously been allowed outside Japan. The MFA's "Burning of the Sanjo Palace" was side by side with a companion scroll painting that is kept in the collection of the Imperial Palace.

Similarly, there are things from UNESCO world heritage sites in India and Indonesia which you can't legally acquire today -- but which were available when the right doors were knocked-upon back around 1900. These kind of collections were appreciated in Boston when most of the other museum only wanted Europen Old Master paintings and some sculputures.

Bostonian's bought Renoirs, Monets and espcially Millets when others were ignoring them -- that's why there are more Monets and Millets here than any other museum outside of France. Its also why in a few months Renoirs three iconic dance paintings will be together here again: Boston's "Dance at Bougival" with Paris' "Dance in the City" and 'Dance in the Country"

A couple of Russian imigrants began collecting American Furniture and decorative Arts, later American paintings -- the Maxim & Madame Karolik donated it to the MFA and it forms a part of the unequaled collection of Colonial and early Federal period American Art -- obviously it didn't hurt that a lot of it such as Revere's Silver, Copley's Pottraits, Samuel Macintire's furniture was actually done here

sc164676.fpx&obj=iip,1.0&wid=568&cell=568,427&cvt=jpeg


the chest was purchased from the decendents of the Derby-West's the Salem family who commisioned the work by Samuel Macintire (he also built the mansion for them --
and the MFA just happens to have a lot of the woodwork from some of the rooms in "Oak Hill" the 18th Century mansion -- both can be seen together in the Arts of the Americas

Similarly, while John Singer Sargent was originally from Philly -- he had lots of friends and a studio in Boston as well as his studio in London. Sargent's friend Bostonian Edward Boit commissioned a group portrait of the Boit daughters -- Sargent painted it in Boit's Paris pied a terre complete with 2 person-sized Chinese vases which the Boits carted back and forth across the Atlantic. The "Daughter's of Edward Darley Boit" is exhibited along with the jars in a gallery on the 2nd floor of the Arts of the Americas

Of course this approach of to a large extent relying on donation of indiidual iconic works or collections of objects has some drawbacks since Bostonians didn't much like abstract impresionists and so for a long time there were very few.
 
whighlander said:
Bostonians didn't much like abstract impresionists and so for a long time there were very few.
Click to expand...

That's not necessarily a bad thing :rolleyes:

Sadly, that genre is America's most "important" contribution to the world of painting. We do a bit better in music, theater, film, and other media.

... IMO, it's too bad the MFA is now putting so much elbow-grease (and pocket money) into the me-too/trendy area of contemporary art in recent years, although it is naturally a lot harder to collect Old Masters or Tang Dynasty statuary these days, given limited supply on the market.
 
http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/specials/mfa/mfa_size/


What i once read is that Washington and the Metropolitan are the first two but also in a league of their own. I don't remember the order. Boston and Chicago third and fourth. This was from a Boston source so the 3rd position may change depending on the local prospective.

The are many categories where the MFA is first outside the home country. The are many categories the MFA is first in this country and there are many individual objects that can be considered the best in a US museum. In the case of Gauguin, many consider his masterpiece to be at the MFA. Same can be said about the Gardner and the Fogg.

I doubt any major art museum in the world works harder to create a better visitor experience. If you are looking for a good time to visit go on Thursday night, the museum is almost empty.

I read recently that the Fogg is in the top ten in the US.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top