The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) opened its doors to the public on July, 4, 1876. Since then, it has become one of the largest and iconic art museums in the world. It houses a rich collection that encompasses more than 500.000 artworks of all kinds and types.
As a result of rapid growth in museum collections and in number of visitors, the museum moved to its current site on the Huntington Avenue in 1909. Through time, it has gone through more extensive restoration and extension projects in hopes to answer changing visitor needs and house its ever-growing collections.
The first project was the opening of the new ‘’The Arts of the Americas Wing’’, which today features best examples of American art in a 4-floor building. Second project was the transformation of the West Wing into the ‘’Linde Family Wing’’ to explore contemporary art and represent the most influential artists of our time. Last but not least, new galleries for European, Asian and African art were opened in 2013, to reflect artistic heritage and richness of these geographies.
From Asia to Africa, contemporary art to photography, textiles to drawings, the MFA explores the art in great depth. It holds the most complete John Singer Sargent collection, which is also considered as one of the most distinguishing feautures of the museum. At the Sargent Room located in the new wing of the Museum, visitors find a speical chance to meet with the 19th century’s most influential artist, and explore his life, creativity and works through his 25 oil paintings, water colours, drawings and sculptures. Here, they also find a chance to see one of the treasures of the Museum and European Art History, Sargent’s scandalious and wonderful painting ‘Madame X’.
In addition to its rich collection, the Museum also celebrates the artist with the Sargent Archive. Both accessible at the MFA and online, this archive provides visitors and researchers a special collection of records, and includes letters from Sargent to several correspondants.