By Penny Fishburn and Keira Lu
The Greater Boston area is known for its rich fine art history, with many museums that showcase thousands of pieces – some that are rarely known elsewhere. Boston itself is a beautiful city, and the surrounding suburbs are a great scenic region and an inspiration for artists. Its many museums are quite famous for their extravagant displays of art from all over the world, as well as sculptures, ancient artifacts and contemporary art.
The Institute of Contemporary Art, or the ICA, is located in South Boston near the seaport and holds dozens of exhibitions by a variety of artists from all different backgrounds. The architecture of the building itself is unique and modern. Three stories high, the angular building has a protruding third-level glass terrace that overlooks the harbor, as well as an outdoor amphitheatre that opens onto the waterfront. The hallways are filled with galleries that explore all types of modern art- paintings, sketches, statues, immersive rooms and more. The famous sculpture park of DeCordova is located in Lincoln, about 20 miles northwest of Boston. The park showcases more than 60 famous sculptures, scattered throughout the 30-acre park. In the center of the park is the DeCordova Museum, a three-story building that features seasonal exhibits of contemporary art. But the biggest and most extravagant museum in the Boston area is the Museum of Fine Arts, known to most as the MFA.
The MFA’s current building is located in the Fenway district in Boston. The MFA features many different kinds of exhibits, some that are longer and more ongoing, and some that are just passing through.
Some more popular ongoing exhibits include the Arts of Japan and Masterpieces of Egyptian Sculpture from the Pyramid Age. The Arts of Japan exhibit features many different forms of media, including painting, sculpture, and a selection of the elegant ukiyo-e prints that launched the Japonaise movement in European art. The flowing, definitive lines of black ink are stark and bold, but not rigid. Graceful motion is conveyed vividly in many of the prints. Spanning three galleries and an adaptation of a traditional tearoom, the Arts of Japan gallery is an immersive experience that everybody can enjoy.
The Masterpieces of Egyptian Sculpture from the Pyramid Age houses a splendid collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts from 4,000 years ago. One of the most famous artworks in the exhibit is the statue of King Menkaura and his queen, which was made in the Old Kingdom era of Egypt. The collection also includes pottery, jewelry, carvings on walls, and paintings. One of the most popular exhibits at the MFA, the Masterpieces of Egyptian Sculpture from the Pyramid Age exhibit brings a sense of wonder to everyone who sees it. In theme with the Egyptian sculpture galleries, the MFA boasts an extensive gallery dedicated entirely to mummies and other Egyptian funerary arts. This gallery features not only ancient Egyptians’ mummified remains and beautiful sarcophagi, but also displays the canopic jars they used to store organs when preserving a body. All this combines to make a definitely memorable experience for visitors.
Another very popular exhibit is the Impressionism and Beyond gallery, as well as the Monet gallery. Claude Monet is very famous for his luminous, airy watercolor landscapes, and the MFA showcases one of the most complete collections of the artist’s work. Through intricate brush strokes and delicately chosen colors, Monet depicts a beautiful, dreamlike world, full of light and air. One of his most famous series, Water Lilies, Reflections of Weeping Willows, is displayed in the collection. The colors are soft and jewel-like, the brushwork carefully blending light and shadow together to create a fairy like effect.
The other Impressionism gallery features more realistic, urban-themed art, by various European artists including Edgar Degas, Pierre Bonnard and Paul Gauguin. Many portray boulevards lined with buildings or specific people, but some show sweeping countryside or peaceful seas. There are no defining lines or boundaries in the art, so colors transform seamlessly into one another and details are sculpted only by transitions of shading.
The Chinese Song Dynasty gallery is another beautiful room full of rare and delicate art pieces. Dating back to the North Song dynasty of the late 900’s, the variety of artifacts, including paintings, calligraphy, ink drawings and ceramics, explores the dynasty’s refined, elegant yet expressive style. The star of the gallery is Guanyin, Bodhisattva of Compassion, a colossal painted sculpture of Guanyin, the Buddhist goddess of mercy and the protector of children. The rest of the gallery displays a rich collection of arts, including an extremely rare blue Ru-ware dish, whose seamless design and exquisite, pale glaze evokes the feeling of a clear morning sky. The gallery also shows a number of sculptures and
Alongside more traditional art and artifact galleries the museum has whole rooms designed and furnished to look historically accurate. Most notably they have the Newland House Drawing Room on display in gallery 241B, where it has been since 1931, excepting a closing between the 1970s and 2013. The drawing room was transported and originally restored based on an 1700s manor house in Gloucester, England, with furniture dating back to around 1748.
Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits
March 30 – September 7, 2025
In research for this article we visited the MFA’s exhibit on Vincent Van Gogh, specifically his Roulin Family Portraits, a series of portraits showcasing the Roulin family of Southern France. He painted these portraits in 1888 and 1889 when he lived next door to the family. They maintained a close relationship, especially Van Gogh and the father of the other household, a postman named Joseph. Van Gogh painted numerous portraits of him, along with his wife, Augustine, and children, Armand, Camille, and Marcelle. The exhibit even displays letters between Vincent and Joseph after Van Gogh was committed to a mental hospital for cutting off his own ear. Though it is believed that Van Gogh once dreamed of having a family himself, it appears that he instead settled for a close relationship with a friend’s family, the Roulins. It seems he enjoyed experimenting on their paintings, often creating many variations of the same painting with slightly different light or coloring, proof that Vincent Van Gogh really was a learning artist for most, if not all, of his short career.
On the day we visited, I noticed that Van Gogh painted each family member separately, with no full family portraits. He also often put one of the family members into another scene he painted that had nothing to do with the family. Most oftenly, he would add Augustine Roulin, the mother of the family and Joseph’s wife, into his paintings. The museum said that Van Gogh also had a very close relationship with Augustine. He described her as a kind, soothing, sure-footed figure and she is always portrayed in his paintings as peaceful and motherly. For example, one of Van Gogh’s paintings depicts a crowded ballroom full of dancing, twirling figures, but in the corner stands the figure of Augustine, serene and smiling amid the commotion around her. Another painting shows the Biblical story of the resurrection of Lazarus. Van Gogh painted Augustine as the role of Lazarus’ grieving sister, while Lazarus’s face looks almost like Van Gogh’s. Augustine was like a stable support to Van Gogh, and I felt his love and respect for Augustine and how she played a large role in the artist’s life.
All in all, the MFA is a diverse, wonderful collage of art from all ages and backgrounds, sure to inspire and encourage all rising artists. Our visit was definitely wonderful and I left feeling inspired. If you’re ever looking for a great arty experience, searching for inspiration, or just enjoy a good museum, you should definitely pay a visit to the MFA.
