Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts opens its new Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art on Sept. 17 and 18, 2011. The renovated two-story wing offers more than 21,000 square feet of gallery space, according to the museum, including eight rooms (among them the museum’s first gallery devoted to video art), plus hallways and the existing Foster Gallery for special exhibits. This triples the amount of space the museum has had devoted to contemporary art (in this case seemingly defined as art since about 1960), and gives it 17 percent more space for contemporary art than the 18,000 square feet of galleries at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art.
It’s cool to see the MFA devoting significant space to contemporary art. The Foster Gallery is devoted to rotating exhibits, but the rest of the spaces appear dedicated to long-term installations of works from the museum’s permanent collection. The museum has a deserved reputation for being slim in its contemporary art offerings and holdings, and this installation is an elegant effort to conceal those flaws by focusing somewhat on themes rather than strict chronology. The curators, though, still follow a pretty conventional history of art of the past five decades—basically the version told in New York—that can highlight the collection’s weaknesses (a decent number of big names, but not their finest works), but also signals a desire to compete in the contemporary art big leagues.
Photos by The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research.
From left to right: Pablo Picasso “Rape of the Sabine Women,” 1963; Richard Tuttle “System 5: Glass Suit,” 2011; Jannis Kounellis “Untitled,” 1997.
Sigmar Polke “Lager (Camp),” 1982; Felix Gonzalez-Torres “Untitled (Beginning,” 1994; Morris Louis, “Theta,” 1961; Lynda Benglis “Wing,” 1970.
Peter Coffin “Untitled (Designs for Colby Poster Co., the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston set,” 2008; Louise Nevelson, “Mirror-Shadow VIII,” 1985; Fred Wilson “Iago’s Mirror,” 2009; Andy Warhol, “Red Disaster,” 1963 and ‘85; Tony Smith, “For V.T.,” designed 1969, posthumously fabricated 1990; Roni Horn “Asphere X,” 1986-90; Ellsworth Kelly, “Blue Green Yellow Orange Red,” 1968.
Yasumasa Morimura “Dialogue with Myself 1,” 2001, on wallpaper by Timorous Beasties, “Glasgow Toile Fabric,” 2004.
Kiki Smith “Lilith,” 1994; Mona Hatoum “Grater Divide,” 2002; George Segal “The Artist in His Loft,” 1969.
Liliana Porter “Untitled with Fallen Chairs,” 2009; Kara Walker “The Rich Soil Down There,” 2002; Doris Salcedo “Untitled,” 1989; Rachel Whitread “Double–Doors II (A+B),” 2006-07.
George Segal “The Artist in His Loft,” 1969; Christian Boltanski “Lumieres (blue square–Sylvie),” 2000; Mona Hatoum “Grater Divide,” 2002.
El Anatsui “Black River,” 2009; Nick Cave “Sound Suit,” 2008; Dana Schutz “Female Model,” 2007; Matthew Day Jackson “Bockscar,” 2010; Jim Hodges “The New Times, 12/5-6/2005 (Kigali, Rwanda),” 2005.
Nick Cave “Sound Suit,” 2008; Jeffrey Gibson “Slippage,” 2010, “Backward Vision,” 2010, “Untitled (Backward Vision Black and White),” 2011, “Untitled Poster Installation (Backward Vision and Slippage),” 2011; El Anatsui “Black River,” 2009.
Cecily Brown “Skulldiver III (Flightmask),” 2006; Josiah McElhney “Endlessly Repeating Twentieth-Century Modernism,” 2007; Gerhard Richter “Vase,” 1984; Donald Judd “Untitled,” 1993.
Howard Ben Tre “Fluted Vessel,” 1992; Toshiko Takaezu “Ka Hua 7,” 1985; Jun Kaneko, two untitled glazed stoneware pieces from 1993.
Kader Attia “Po(l)etical,” 2009; Lawrence Weiner “Aphorism–Archimedes,” 2007.
Michael Phelan “Bless You Taco Bell,” 2009.
Scott Prior “Nanny and Rose,” 1983; Sharon Lockhart “Old Boiler Shop: Proud and Shaun,” 2008, “Scott Skelton, Outside Machinist,” 2008.
Ellsworth Kelly “Untitled,” 1996.