The new Art of Americas Wing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, isn’t a wing as much as vertebrae. Rising four floors, like T-shaped backbone cartilage, the $300 million expansion, which opened in November, politely breaks a few time-honored rules in presenting art.
From three points on the compass, you hardly notice the glass-enclosed structure from the outside. It’s neatly wedged between two of the museum’s three Beaux-Arts buildings built a century ago. Only about a quarter of the expansion is visible.
As such, its arrival — one local writer opined it’s the most significant cultural addition to the city since Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall in the 1970s — is about changes internally, not outward appearances, like so many other museum expansions these days.
What’s inside is a significantly different approach to curating and displaying 5,000 artworks, double the amount prior to the new wing. The net addition of gallery space is 16 percent, although the new building, at more than 121,000 square feet, represents a 42 percent increase in size, including office and storage space.
About 60,000 square feet was demolished, while 22,000 square feet of auditorium space and the expansive Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Courtyard connect the old sections with the new. Designed for the New American Cafe, one of the three restaurants, and for special events, the Courtyard offers tantalizing views inside the new galleries from afar as it rises up from the ground floor. From the galleries, small platforms, along stairs, patrons can gaze out over the courtyard’s bold space lightly sprinkled with sculptures.
One rule the MFA breaks is how American art is classified. And it’s a big one. Typically, encyclopedic museums take a Eurocentric approach by starting with objects made in the late 14th century to the present. But the MFA opted to encompass all of the Americas — Mexico, Central and South. Not only is the entire Western Hemisphere included, its time line stretches back to antiquity.
At first, this is disorienting. With so many different cultures — Incan, Mayan, Spanish, French — it’s hard to connect all the dots of diversity because there isn’t much connective tissue between such disparate traditions.
What the Aztecs were doing had very little to do — that we know of, at least — with a Brazilian tribe centuries later. The concept rejects the established cultural time line of history. While it’s a big leap to catalogue the America’s artistic experience in such a way, it offers an inclusive look at all the cultural identities.
The four floors are divided chronologically as skeleton framework that orientates visitors, but within each floor, myriad small spaces are arranged by themes — some permanent, others, such as “Embroideries of Colonial Boston: Samplers,” rotating.
A distinguishing feature is several “behind the scenes” kiosks scattered throughout. Expanding on a trend in recent years of museums opening up stored collections to the public, the MFA takes it a step further into the computer age. You can mix and match paintings by different artists, take quizzes on genres and gain insights in the process of operating a major museum and how exhibits are organized.
Overall, nearly three dozen smaller gallery spaces fill the new wing, allowing for unique segmentation and assembly, including rooms for American Impressionism next to Boston Impressionism and The Boston School adjacent to the related American Renaissance.
On the first level, neoclassicism in Boston 1790-1830 is alongside period rooms flanked by space devoted to John Singleton Copley, considered one of the greatest early American painters. The ground level has ship models, a mini-exhibit on trade and cultures coupled with ancient Mesoamerica, Pre-Columbian gold and Andean civilizations and Native North American Art with the Manning Room, a near-complete replica of a 17th century New England home.
The merging of these separate traditions goes a long way in offering a complete but uncluttered look at the New World that’s balanced and authentic. Elliot Bostwick Davis, the Moors Abbot chair of the Art of Americas department, admits there are gaps in the collection to cement deeper connections — a situation to be corrected by an aggressive acquisition plan — but patrons are most interested in touching their own pasts through art.
Through numerous surveys, people clearly wanted an experience that was related to their own traditions. “After all, we are nation of immigrants, which makes American art flexible in its presentation,” Davis said.
The Art of the Americas wing does what academics have been saying for the past 30 years: Take the one-sided European view out of displaying art, and you’ll have a more accurate portrayal of society.
SIX TO SEE
“Watson and the Shark” (1778): Known for his portraits defining Revolutionary America, this rare historical painting shows a different side to John Singleton Copley that portends many later developments in American life.
“The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” (1882): Shrouded in mystery and innuendo, this John Singer Sargent painting has deeply psychological qualities the American developed in the middle stages of his illustrious career, played out later in the 1890s
“Drug Store” (1927): Done early in Edward Hopper’s career, the corner scene is signature Hopper, but in more modest and direct terms as the quintessential 20th-century artist developed his form.
“Staccato” (1965): Little-known Argentinean Cesar Paternosto rivets with his vibrant colors and forms that bounce off the canvas on par with any American abstract expressionist.
“Self-Portrait” (1885): Talk about girl power. Boston’s Ellen Day Hale’s powerful self-portrait signifies the growing influence of women in the arts in the late 19th century.
“Don Manuel Jose Rubio y Salinas, Archbishop of Mexico” (1758): Miguel Cabrera is considered the top painter in 18th-century New Spain, now Mexico. A recent acquisition by the MFA, it perfectly conveys the power of the Catholic Church in the new world
IF YOU GO
Where: Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston, Mass.
Info: (617) 267-9300;
Hours: 10 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Saturday through Tuesday; 10 a.m.-9:45 p.m. Wednesday through Friday
Admission: Members, free; adults, $20; seniors and students 18 and older, $18; children 6 and younger, free. Youths aged 7 to 17, weekdays before 3: $7.50
