Boston: An Afternoon of Fine Art

While I’m between trips, I thought I’d share some (edited) posts I originally wrote while in school in Boston in 2009/10 on a now defunct blog (read at most by only three family members). Inspired by The Year of 52 Adventures, I made a point of using my weekends to explore much of what Boston had to offer. I fell in love with Boston, so if you happen to find yourself in Boston, perhaps these posts will lead to your own love affair…

Originally Posted September, 2009

Being a student in Boston opens so many doors. Literally. Many museums offer free entry with a student ID card, and that includes the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). Being only a block or two from my academic campus, this made a perfect excursion for a Saturday afternoon. I had counted on spending maybe a couple hours at the museum. I ended up happily wandering around for four hours! I was unaware that the afternoon has slipped away so quickly until a museum guard shouted, “Museum closing in five minutes!” I had arrived at 1pm. When I next looked at my watch it was 5pm.

I was also surprised by the fact that I felt I had hardly seen anything. I and the two girls I had gone with started our tour with the wonderful collection of musical instruments. Then we made our way through the Mexican photographs and artwork of Diego Rivera, Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, and others. I had studies these photographers in a History of Mexico Through Photography class in undergrad so I was excited to stumble upon this collection.

Life imitating art

We walked through rooms of aboriginal artwork and artifacts from around the world. Then we spent some time viewing the large Japanese art and artifacts collection. When we hit the start of the Chinese collection we all agreed that none of us knew enough about Asian culture to have a great enough appreciation to keep going. So we turned around in search of European Impressionist and Italian Renaissance paintings, which we all had studied during undergrad and could more readily appreciate. As we wandered through the galleries of European artwork we conversed about what we had learned in classes and through our travels and how it related to the pieces we were viewing. All in all it was a wonderful afternoon and we were sad to leave. We agreed we would have to go back and finish up when we had the time.