Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas. With more than 1.2 million visitors a year, it is the 79th–most visited art museum in the world as of 2022.
Founded in 1870 in Copley Square, the museum moved to its current Fenway location in 1909. It is affiliated with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts.
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. Most of its initial collection came from the Athenæum's Art Gallery. 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.
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. It was built almost entirely of brick and terracotta, which was imported from England, with some stone about its base.
After the MFA moved out in 1909, this original building was demolished, and the Copley Plaza Hotel (now the Fairmont Copley Plaza) replaced it in 1912.
New MFA building in the Fenway, c. 1913–1918
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 in 1909.
The second phase of construction built a wing along The Fens to house painting 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.
The Tenshin-En Japanese Garden designed by Kinsaku Nakane opened in 1988, and the Norma Jean Calderwood Garden Court and Terrace opened in 1997.
Rose Garden and Museum of Fine Arts, Fenway, June 14, 1934. Leon Abdalian Collection, Boston Public Library
In 2007, the MFA announced its purchase of a nearby building then occupied by the Forsyth Institute, a dental and craniofacial research organization located at 140 The Fenway. The original Beaux Arts building dates from around 1910, and was later expanded with a Brutalist annex building. The entire property comprised approximately 107,000 square feet (9,900 m2) on 1.6 acres (0.65 ha) of land, located across the street from the main MFA building. As of 2023, the building is leased to nearby Northeastern University.
2008–present
Tenshin-en, the museum's Japanese garden
The new Art of the Americas wing is integrated with the neoclassical facade of the main building
The Shapiro Courtyard, which houses Dale Chihuly's Lime Green Icicle Tower (right), is used to host large banquets and other events.
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.
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.
Here is a local Business that supports the community
Google Map- https://maps.app.goo.gl/qJTLnPuJphATKsBb8
361 Newbury St., Floor 4, Boston, MA 02115
Be sure to check out this attraction too!

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

This website uses cookies.