MFA Adds New Contemporary Art to Bolster Collection

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has pledged to buy 24 contemporary artworks. They announced their plan in May and started acquiring pieces in June. All the artwork will be by artists who live in the US. Additionally, Massachusetts-based artists have been particularly sought after for future purchases.

The first two pieces purchased feature minorities: the first is a piece about immigrant workers, and the second is dedicated to the first democratically-elected leader in in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The MFA has stated that they don’t intend to show the new acquisitions as a group. MFA Director Matthew Teitelbaum said, “Contemporary artists are part of the fabric of our community, and essential to who we are as an institution. Their commitment, innovation and engagement with the world inspires us in times of challenge.¹” The MFA knows about challenge; they have struggled due to the pandemic shutdown and recently lost over 100 employees, either to layoffs or early retirement.

Contemporary Art in Boston

The MFA has a tumultuous history with contemporary art. These acquisitions are the most recent step in a long progression toward accepting contemporary art at the museum. The Linde Wing opened in 2011 with an accompanying slogan: “All Art Has Been Contemporary.” This slogan was displayed on the wall of the Linde Wing, but also on merchandise like t-shirts (I sleep in one of them regularly). The slogan is objectively true and obvious, but it serves as a statement that there is nothing to fear from contemporary art, while also standing defiantly, almost petulantly, in the face of those are against the MFA’s contemporary wing (you can imagine a teenager sticking out her tongue while saying it).

The MFA’s ambivalence toward contemporary art is a microcosm of the way people in the entire city of Boston have felt about art created after the Impressionist era. Boston loved Impressionism, and it still does; the Monet gallery at the MFA is one of the largest collection of the painter’s works outside of France. But when Impressionism gave way to other styles like Surrealism and Expressionism, Boston seemed to have stopped paying attention.

The St. Botolph Club: The Avant-Garde in Boston

The St. Botolph Club was founded in 1880 as a place for artists and art lovers to go in Boston to view, purchase, and discuss art. It still exists and its members still display their art on its walls. When it was founded, it was just for men, as most clubs in Boston were, and these men were typical upper class Bostonians, seemingly “unlikely sponsors of an avant-garde art movement²“

It was not alone; Boston also had the Art Club and the Paint and Clay Club. But the St. Botolph embraced Impressionism, and Monet in particular, more than any other club or organization in Boston. The St. Botolph put on more shows a year than anyone else and they had three exhibits for just Monet. The Boston upper crust also loved Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent. Isabella Stewart Gardner had Sargent installed in her house (which became the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) as an artist in residence, and he painted many portraits of Boston’s wealthier citizens. Both Sargent and Cassatt were exhibited at the St. Botolph and both are heavily displayed at the MFA (and, for obvious reasons, Sargent is prominent at the Gardner Museum as well).

It is especially interesting to note that when the St. Botolph first exhibited Monet, “club members loaned all but seven of the twenty-one paintings, while the remainder came primarily from other Boston collections³” Monet was particularly prolific; he painted nearly 2,000 works over his career. Therefore, Bostonians could easily get their hands on his paintings.

But why was Boston the spot in America where Impressionism flourished? A lot of it has to do with connections. Many Impressionist painters, particularly Monet, Sargent, and Cassatt, had friends in Boston. Sargent’s father was also from Gloucester, Massachusetts. Mary Cassatt was good friends with at least one St. Botolph member, thus cementing her relationship with that club⁴.

Boston’s reaction to Impressionism was not universal; the first two of the three Monet shows at the St. Botolph were met with negative reviews⁵. But over time, the public became more enamored with Impressionism, especially as art moved past Impressionism into more expressive styles.

And there Boston sat for decades: loving Impressionism and ignoring or dismissing most contemporary art after it. There are theories that Boston briefly deviated from its Puritan, strait-laced views about art in the years after the Civil War, and then eventually returned to its austere roots, but no one can really say what happened or why Boston has been so reluctant to embrace contemporary art. When the Armory Show, the massive contemporary art show in New York that launched dozens of careers and redefined art, came to Boston, people just didn’t show up. Looking back on it now, it’s hard to see how people who were in a frenzy to buy the new Impressionist style of art couldn’t just keep going and be as excited about Cubism or any other natural progression from Impressionism. But they didn’t. And there has been a dearth of contemporary art in Boston ever since.

Contemporary Art and the MFA

The MFA has had a Contemporary Art department since 1971, but their dedicated wing for contemporary art opened 40 years later. The museum has received criticism for its perceived lack of contemporary art, and particularly a lack of art from New England artists, for years ⁶. When the Linde Wing opened, there were 10 works from Boston artists on view, which the museum placed as a response to the criticism.

The wing opened to largely positive reviews, but there was some criticism about their opening party, which was clearly meant to target young people; they had three time slots for their opening and one was at 3am. But at a $50 price point, they did not get many young people. This is part of a larger criticism about access and young people that we will dive deeper into in the future. They also had social media campaigns that invited participation and engagement, but then they did nothing with them. Despite these issues, the opening was largely successful. Selfies are encouraged in the Linde Wing and the wing is a great encapsulation of something that the MFA has always done very well: they position their pieces in conversation with each other so that the visitor is forced to make connections between them.

Since 2011, there have been many exhibits in the Linde Wing, and two highlights for me have been the Gender Bending Fashion exhibit, which I think is one of the best exhibits I’ve ever seen, and the Memory Unearthed exhibit that showed candid and intimate photos from the Lodz ghetto during the Holocaust. The MFA has been on a journey for improvement in regards to contemporary art for some time, and this new acquisition plan is the latest effort to become more inclusive and to be more representative of Boston. The Linde Wing opening in 2011 proved to the world that the MFA was unquestionably an encyclopedic museum, and now they are coming back to Boston to showcase our local artists, as well as other underrepresented artists living in America. It’s a clear step forward.

1. “MFA Announces New Initiative To Support Contemporary Artists,” accessed July 31, 2020, https://www.wbur.org/artery/2020/05/28/mfa-announces-new-initiative-to-support-contemporary-artists.
2. Doris A. Birmingham, “Boston’s St. Botolph Club: Home of the Impressionists,” Archives of American Art Journal 31, no. 3 (January 1991): 26–34, https://doi.org/10.1086/aaa.31.3.1557610.
3. Doris A. Birmingham, “Boston’s St. Botolph Club: Home of the Impressionists,” Archives of American Art Journal 31, no. 3 (January 1991): 26–34, https://doi.org/10.1086/aaa.31.3.1557610.
4. Doris A. Birmingham, “Boston’s St. Botolph Club: Home of the Impressionists,” Archives of American Art Journal 31, no. 3 (January 1991): 26–34, https://doi.org/10.1086/aaa.31.3.1557610.
5. Doris A. Birmingham, “Boston’s St. Botolph Club: Home of the Impressionists,” Archives of American Art Journal 31, no. 3 (January 1991): 26–34, https://doi.org/10.1086/aaa.31.3.1557610.
6. “MFA Unveils New Contemporary Art Wing | WBUR News,” accessed July 31, 2020, https://www.wbur.org/news/2011/09/16/mfa-new-wing.