Museum of Fine Arts

Latest Articles

States of the art

New England museums worth traveling for
In New England, where you can't swing a sack of cranberries without hitting a venerable cultural institution, anyone with access to a car (or even a subway pass) can scope out these topnotch art museums.
By SHAULA CLARK | June 09, 2009

Trail of tunes

Music al fresco at summer fests
The best summer music festivals take something from the season: the smell of the surf, the sight of the mountains, fireworks, lawn seating — or, at least, fried dough.
By CLEA SIMON | June 09, 2009

Free and easy

10 cash-free ways to make summer not suck
With a beach season approaching in which most people will be squeezing quarters till the eagles fart, it's fair enough to ask aloud, "Is this going to be the worst summer ever ?"
By CHRIS FARAONE | June 11, 2009

Festival atmosphere

Between the Blockbuster and the beach there are the film festivals of New England
Summer traditionally has been the happy hunting ground for Hollywood studios — the time when they unleash their big-budgeted, f/x-heavy warhorses on armies of newly freed schoolchildren and frazzled adults trying to beat the heat.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 09, 2009

Slideshow: Two Mexican exhibits at MFA

Images from "Viva Mexico! Edward Weston and His Contemporaries" and "Vida y Drama: Modern Mexican Prints"
"Viva Mexico!" with "Vida y Drama"
By PHOENIX STAFF | June 02, 2009

Make a run for the border

Edward Weston in Mexico, plus modern Mexican prints
In August 1923, photographer Edward Weston left his wife and three of his four sons in Los Angeles and headed to Mexico City.
By GREG COOK | June 02, 2009

Dark passage

Film noir and the Production Code at the MFA
The Production Code, Hollywood's notorious self-censorship program, was instituted by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in 1930, but it didn't go into effect till 1934, when it was administered by Joseph I. Breen.
By STEVE VINEBERG | May 27, 2009

Viva Modernism

'Vida y Drama: Modern Mexican Prints' and 'Viva Mexico!: Edward Weston and his Contemporaries' at the MFA
Long before the threat of swine flu, Mexico was the scene of an outbreak of a very different kind: Modernism.
By EVAN J. GARZA | May 12, 2009

Let's talk about sex

Truth and Consequences in Hide and Seek
It's not that Eve's religious but sisterly mother wouldn't understand, it's that Eve is apprehensive about her not understanding.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 06, 2009

Dire Strait

Strained relations in the Boston Turkish Film Festival
If the selections in this year's Boston Turkish Film Festival are any indication, nobody in that country lives happily ever after these days.
By PETER KEOUGH | March 25, 2009

East meets West

'Shôwa' at the MFA, and Mrs. Gardner's Asian tour
The paintings in "Shôwa Sophistication" at the Museum of Fine Arts are like the dreamiest travel posters you've ever seen.
By GREG COOK | March 24, 2009

Whodunit?

Art thief Myles Connor talks
Myles Connor: Mayflower descendant, Mensa member, master of disguise, black belt in karate, self-styled "President of Rock 'n' Roll." And probably the most notorious art thief in the history of the United States.
By MIKE MILIARD | March 18, 2009

Slideshow: X-ray reveals secrets of Tintoretto's painting

“Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice” at the MFA.
Jacopo Tintoretto’s painting Nativity , in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, has long puzzled scholars because of its odd composition.
By GREG COOK | March 19, 2009

Three's company

Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese rule at the MFA
The show's American curator, Frederick Ilchman, has snagged an improbable number of pairs and trios from the world's famous (and not so famous) museums.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 11, 2009

Slideshow: Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese at MFA

"Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
By PHOENIX STAFF | March 12, 2009

The whiff of art

Heide Hatry, Misaki Kawai, Andrew Mowbray, and William Pope.L
The stench came from the rotting corpse — well, it appeared to be a corpse — of a woman who'd been laid out on a metal table like an exhumed murder victim awaiting a coroner's examination.
By GREG COOK | March 03, 2009

Pop goes Wittgenstein

Jean-Luc Godard at the Museum of Fine Arts
"We were indeed in a political film — that is to say, Walt Disney plus blood." You might have read that bit of '60s film voiceover in a book, but it's unlikely you've ever heard Anna Karina speak it.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | February 18, 2009

David Hilliard at Carroll and Sons

Plus Japanese and European works at the MFA
It's not every day that a guy like me gets to enjoy a photographic investigation of daddy-boy relationships. . . . well, outside of a naughty format.
By EVAN J. GARZA | January 26, 2009

Beauty and the East

Boston-area art spaces look to Asia this winter
Gallery-goers with an affinity for art from Asia will have plenty of reason for excitement with a handful of enticing shows this winter.
By EVAN J. GARZA | December 29, 2008

Year in pictures

Imagery 2008
Imagery 2008
By PHOENIX STAFF | December 24, 2008

Review: The Human Condition

Kobayashi's 10-hour epic
Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi (1916-1996) always stood up to the established order
By BRETT MICHEL | December 22, 2008

Year in Art: Beyond the gloom

Continuing cheer in dark times
The Boston art scene felt muted for much of 2008, with 10 galleries closing and the death of two local icons: Harriet Casdin-Silver and Jules Aarons.
By GREG COOK | December 22, 2008

Voice of regeneration

Richie Havens rages on 40 years after Woodstock
Havens, who comes to the MFA this Sunday, has been following his muse since he was a child.
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | December 16, 2008

Andy Warhol: Denied

A wry, amusing bit of art-world sleuthing
Andy himself would love the to-do concerning his mountains of left-over work.
By GERALD PEARY | November 25, 2008

Dream catcher

Karen Shakhnazarov at the MFA
Karen Shakhnazarov at the MFA
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | November 25, 2008

Exposures

Photos from Yousuf Karsh, William Christenberry, and the PRC
In "Karsh 100: A Biography in Images," which is now up at the Museum of Fine Arts, his iconic shots of Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and Ernest Hemingway are defining portraits of the men in all their crusty manliness.
By GREG COOK | November 14, 2008

Axel Willner , Eric Schlosser , Sergei Prokofiev , Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Sonia Sotomayor , Rush Limbaugh , Barry Goldwater , AS220 , Mike Tyson , William Shakespeare