Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Having just returned from a museum-heavy journey to Boston, I have tons to talk about; hopefully this will make up for having not posted in a full month.

I’m really glad to have been able to go at this time, and to catch all the great exhibits that were up right now. Though, that said, Boston area museums, and the MFA in particular, always have fantastic exhibits, so any time is good. Living in New York, one would think that I’d have so many opportunities to see so much more, do so much more than elsewhere, for example, in Boston. But while there certainly is a lot going on in New York at any given time, and there are tons of institutions you won’t find elsewhere – like the Rubin Museum, which is devoted to Himalayan art – there is no major overall Asian Art museum in New York, and the Asian sections at the Metropolitan just don’t excite me.

By contrast, the histories of the Boston area museums – the MFA, Gardner, and Peabody-Essex in particular – and of cultural life in Boston more widely, are intricately tied into connections to Japan and to East Asia more broadly. You might not think about that when you think of Boston – Colonial history, New England architecture, the Red Sox, Harvard – but the impact of the likes of Okakura Kakuzô, Ernest Fenollosa, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Edward Sylvester Morse, William S. Bigelow, and Charles Goddard Weld was invaluable in opening up the West (the US in particular) to East Asian art, and in fact in opening up East Asia to Western conceptions of “fine art” and to appreciation of their own rich artistic heritages.

The Museum of Fine Arts is an incredible place. It puts a smile on my face just to be there. Is this because I have a personal connection to the museum that I do not have with the Metropolitan or other museums? Absolutely. Through my internship at the MFA, I became intimately familiar with certain artists, certain pieces, with the history of the museum, and with the people who work there, making each and every exhibit much more personal for me, as I know the people behind its creation. I also learned more about Japanese art history through this internship than I ever did in class, and more about how museums are run than in any of my other experiences.

But that very personal connection aside, I still think I would find the MFA a far less impersonal place than, for example, the Metropolitan. It is in any case more brightly lit, the architecture evocative of airiness and openness. The Museum contains several courtyards and gardens, and a number of areas where natural sunlight is allowed to enter the building. The Asian galleries are designed to look like the inside of traditional Asian buildings, with thick wooden pillars, and wooden rafters, etc, creating an environment far more culturally appropriate, and more inspiring, inviting and relaxing than the dimly lit galleries of some other museums or the stark white, completely unadorned rooms of many contemporary art galleries.

Certainly, the MFA is a massive institution (and getting bigger; a major expansion is underway right now) covering art from all around the world, and possessing a great many treasures from a wide range of genres, periods, and media. I am sure that if one were to look into it, they probably have very interesting, deep, and special connections to certain aspects of Greco-Roman, Renaissance, and American Art. They have plenty of Sargent paintings, some great treasures in the European paintings section, and a strong connection to various expeditions at Giza.

But the MFA also possesses the largest collection of Japanese art of any single institution in the world; and more importantly perhaps, they have the space to display that collection. There is a dedicated area for prints, an inspirational, beautiful and meditative Buddhist temple room along with two other small rooms devoted to Japanese Buddhist art, and two more large galleries for rotating Japanese exhibitions. At any given time, the MFA is hosting two to five separate titled, themed, exhibitions (or rotations) of Japanese art, while I don’t believe I can think of a single titled, themed, cohesive exhibition of Japanese art that I have ever seen at the Metropolitan. While I do feel bad for the Chinese side of things at the MFA, which for the most part only has one small room for rotations & temporary exhibits, those rotations/exhibits are still titled, themed, cohesively organized, and housed in a well-lit, inviting space. By contrast, the Japanese galleries at the Met, including the Nakashima-furnished study room, are dark and depressing; it is difficult to see the works properly, and while they may rotate them fairly often, I do not believe I have ever seen an organized, titled, themed exhibit in that space.

This has perhaps turned into an invective against the Metropolitan, and that is not my intention. I fully understand the need to control lighting so as to conserve the artworks, and appreciate that the Met’s collections are perhaps stronger in Chinese art. The MFA’s collection of Japanese art is unparalleled; but, at the same time, I don’t feel that that necessarily means that their exhibitions must be.

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Even outside of just the Japanese galleries, the MFA seems to always be full of life and energy, while at the same time never being so crowded as to be annoying, like some other museums I could name. This weekend, a special program called Art in Bloom was going on; throughout the museum, flower arrangements inspired by individual artworks had been set up, and small guided tours organized around these flower arrangements were moving along through the galleries constantly. While most major museums do have all sorts of programs going on any given week of the year – concerts, lectures, films, courses, gallery tours, gallery talks – somehow I have a sense, a feeling, of the MFA being a particularly happening place as to these things; not necessarily in the number of programs offered, but in the enthusiasm brought to them by those running the events and those attending as well. The smiles, friendliness, and upbeat atmosphere of a beautiful spring day carries itself into the MFA as well, and can be felt throughout the building, not only outside; at other museums, this feeling ends at the door as you are led past security check stations into a crowded lobby made of cold stone and concrete, lit solely by artificial lights.

I am sure that there are many people out there who would dream of a position in the MFA’s Japanese art section, purely on account of their unparalleled collection. But I dream of that dream job for so many more reasons – the architecture, the space, the energy and light, airy, open feeling of the building; the long and deep history, and the wonderful people who I know who work there. Maybe one day, with a lot of hard work, and a ton of just pure luck, I will be able to secure a position there, to work in that amazing environment, with those incredible people, and that wonderful collection again. In the meantime, I shall have to settle for being a visitor.

Much thanks to Flickr users Joe Kester and Kati Szalay for the use of their photos. (Top photo is my own.)