Sunday, November 21, 2010

"Art of the Americas" Wing at the MFA

GO TO THE MFA AND SEE THE NEW WING! My wife volunteers at the MFA in the education department, and for the last two weeks she has been telling me how amazing the "Art of the Americas" wing is. So finally, today, I had the chance to get over there and see it, and... it was stunning. I have been to a handful of museums across the country and have seen some really nice exhibits, and I always thought that Boston's MFA was a really good museum; however, this new wing brings it to a new level.
It was a ten year project, and over a half-a-billion dollars was raised for the building. The new wing is spread over four stories and covers ancient american civilizations to contemporary art from the last twenty years. EVERY last piece of it is amazing. I could go on gushing for pages about all of the amazing things I saw, but I won't, I'll just tell you that you should go!
Here's the website in case your want to take a look:

MFA Boston

P.S. I will share one thing I learned that had to do with a conversation we had earlier this semester. We briefly had a conversation about the "french" sound of BSO when we were talking about the organ in Symphony Hall. Well, Boston had a french connection long before the BSO was founded.
Around the late 1880s, there were exhibitions of French impressionist paintings in Boston. Several key Boston painters, then traveled to France to study and soak in the movement at its source. Upon their return, they began to create impressionistic paintings of the Boston area, which became all the rage.
The MFA has an incredible collection of these paintings and it is fascinating to see just how much Boston was in love with the french!

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