Museum of Fine Arts

Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal explores the origins of these popular prints— which have historically been overlooked by the art world—and their powerful impacts on Indian pop culture, religion, and society.

From 1957 to 1961, Thomas Messer was director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and, for part of that time, taught modern art at Harvard. From 1961 to 1988 he was director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. For a time there was a plan to merge the ICA as the modern/ contemporary department of the MFA. The ICA was briefly housed on the second floor of the Museum School. He advised on a couple of adventurous MFA acquisitions. A contemporary department was eventually established in 1971.

Tina co-founded Shakespeare & Company in 1978 along with a cadre of theater artists, served as its Artistic Director until 2009, and continued to direct, teach, and advocate for the Company until her passing. Her indelible creativity will be carried forward by countless artists, students, colleagues, admirers, and friends, and her influence on the world of Shakespeare will be enduring.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has announced that a suite of new galleries dedicated to modern art will open to the public on December 13. Four new spaces will be unveiled on the first floor of the Museum’s Evans Wing, each showcasing works from the 20th century that include highlights from the MFA’s collection, new acquisitions, and rarely seen loans from private holdings.

Now in her late 80s. Patricia Hills overcame numerous obstacles to become one of the leading scholars and curators of American art. I knew her as a radical leftist feminist at Boston University. This intriguing and insightful memoir chronicles that daunting journey. The book conflates her life as wife and mother with struggles in academia which regarded the study of American art as "too easy." As a force majeure she trained a generation of Americanist scholars and curators.

The Clark Art Institute presents an exhibition on mid-nineteenth-century French artists who looked beyond realistic subject matter. Their work encompasses the Gothic nostalgia of architectural photography, the social critique embedded in searing allegorical illustrations, and the literary connections with fantastical art. Shadow Visionaries: French Artists Against the Current, 1840–70 i

Nobody but Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. could have written such a remarkable book. Drawing on a lifetime as a curator and scholar he has provided a sweeping critical analysis of the field of American Art from Colonial times through the present. With complete authority he rampages through an intriguingly well written and argued book that pulls no punches in telling it like it is.

In every sense Marion Diacono, who died today, was truly unique and remarkable. As a gallerist he had a deep and lasting impact but few of the A list works he showed remained in Boston. Italian born with a global vision his program was light years out of reach for earth bound and generally reactionary collectors, curators and critics. While they came to look mostly collectors failed to open their wallets. There were token sales to the MFA and at that time the ICA did not collect.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), has reached a historic agreement with the known descendants of David?Drake (also known as Dave the Potter) regarding two monumental stoneware vessels in the MFA’s collection that were made by the enslaved potter and poet. The Museum has restored ownership of both works, returning one to Drake’s family and purchasing the other back.

Through the efforts of the Boston Public Art Triennial, the City of Boston’s civic life and built environment have been enhanced and strengthened. Bravo!

Stebbins writes, “People are inclined to view past changes in taste as unique misjudgments that will not happen again….   How unthinking, how stupid, they think, not realizing that the pattern has been repeated again and again in the past and will be in the future. We now recognize that the process is a continual one. Each past canon was established for good reason; there are no mistakes, there is only history. Many of the favored artists of any period including our own will drop from favor, something that art dealers never tell their clients, or museum curators their boards.”

Dating to just a few years after his return from Paris, The Diver is perhaps something of a transitional work for Arthur Polonsky, presenting a stark and puzzling juxtaposition of figural elements. At the most direct and literal level, the painting simply depicts the titular diver leaping off a dock, with a distant bridge standing before far-off factories.The work is on view at Childs Gallery, 168 Newbury Street, Boston.

He cited Edwin Dickinson as his mentor, admiring Dickinson’s painterly restraint, his sensitivity, and the way he taught teaching through seeing and doing. For his whole life, he invoked Dickinson as his most important influence. He used to say that he started painting simply because he was interested in the world, and it seemed to him that painting could be a way that he could learn about it.

“With this exhibition we are pleased to feature an exceptional artist of our time and powerful works that speak to Martin Puryear's creativity and exceptional craftsmanship, and the lifelong learning that has fueled his practice,” said Pierre Terjanian, the MFA’s Ann and Graham Gund Director. “The sculptures included in this survey extend a compelling invitation to engage with themes of culture, identity, and history. We are grateful to our colleagues at the Cleveland Museum of Art for their partnership in making this project possible.”

During the era of Colonialism African nations were ruled by Europeans. This occupation resulted in the looting of some 90% of traditional African art and culture. In recent years German museums have returned tons of Benin Bronzes to NIgeria. The Museum of Fine Arts was pressured to return 34 works loaned to them as eventual gifts by collector Robert Owen Lehman. In a complex negotiation he nullified the agreement but the museum has retained and displayed five works. Noah Smalls of Williams College Art Museum helped to organize “Toward an Inclusive Framework: (Re)Building Black Art Histories in Academe, the Art Market, and Beyond,” for the 2025 College Art Association Conference. With Robert Henriquez we met for lunch to discuss these issues.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), has announced its lineup of 2025–2026 exhibitions, including Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor, a rare display of light-sensitive works that opens November 2. I

Western Massachusetts author and entrepreneur, Steven Reed Nelson, is a free range thinker. A graduate of Harvard Law School, and layman in the field of science, he proposes that the term Homo sapiens be replaced by Homo electric. The introduction of electricity some 200 years ago has greatly impacted human evolution.

Artist and activist Dana C. Chandler, Jr. ( (April 7, 1941 – June 9, 2025) was the foremost Boston African American artist of his generation. Implementing change he got things done. As Edmund Barry Gaither, director of the National Center for African American Artists and MFA adjunct curator put it "Dana shook the tree and we harvested the fruit."

A radio play, The Beginning of the End (of Judy Rhines) by Peter Littlefield, accompanies the installation. The play is a mystery set in the 1940s. Judy Rhines is a secretary, until one day, losing her job and just about everything else, she learns the ways of a witch

Fred Wilson has gained widespread recognition for his groundbreaking artistic practice, which challenges dominant assumptions about history and culture. Working across a range of media—including sculpture, installation, painting, and glass—Wilson is best known for his conceptual interventions that expose the ways museums, archives, and institutions shape our understanding of the past. By reframing cultural narratives and recontextualizing objects, often drawn from historical collections or everyday life.

A second generation Mexican American, Victor Valdez, was a prodigy who with a mentor was painting public murals at the age of 10. Now at mid career the remarkable artists is the subject of a riveting retrospective at MASS MoCA. It features a 30' panorama of hooded Ku Klux Klan members.

Over the past few months, three notable architects have passed, and they left our shared built environment an impressive inheritance. Interestingly, each of their bequests may differ from what might be expected based on an initial look at their professional careers.

With his first feature length film "The Painted Life of Gregory Gillespie" Evan Goodchild has created a complex portrait of a brilliant but troubled artist who ended his life at age 64. In a New York Times obituary Roberta Smith wrote that "Mr. Gillespie had his first solo show in 1966 at the Forum Gallery and was included in several Whitney Biennials in the 1960's and 70's, but he remained an art world outsider, respected by many but enthusiastically embraced by few."

Gallery NAGA is pleased to announce its season closing exhibition, "Possible Necessities," featuring new studio furniture by renowned artist John Dunnigan. This marks Dunnigan's first solo exhibition at Gallery NAGA. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with an essay by Glenn Adamson, Curator at Large, Vitra Design Museum.

When not on tour, Peter Wolf and Magic Dick were my neighbors in the notorious Murder Building. Rent was cheap in the heart of Harvard Square. Wolf was a part of Ed Hood's literary salon which hosted Warhol's factory members and the Velvet Underground. With fellow students of the Museum School he fronted his first group The Hallucinations. He literally moonlighted as a DJ for the emerging WBCN-FM. After two years under the radar his second band J Geils signed with unfavorable terms to Atlantic Records. After several albums and little to show for it they signed with EMI. Their single "Centerfold" went to number one. Having finally made it the band mysteriously canned Wolf and folded after one more album. The well written book has anecdotes of his ventures with the rich and famous including marriage to Faye Dunaway.