MFA

Both the Museum of Fine Arts and the Institute of Contemporary Art are opening their doors at no charge today. The MFA says:

We hope the Museum will be a place of respite for our community.

The ICA says:

We hope the museum will offer a place of community & reflection.

John Carroll runs the numbers on an auction of art the MFA no longer wanted.

The museum is closed today, so they're delivering art online.

A revamped Koch Gallery opens today.

Our own Stevil brings us this photo of the replicas of the MFA giant baby heads now on sale at Circle Furniture in the Back Bay. Just imagine these on your coffee table, staring at you. It'd be like that Twilight Zone episode with Telly Savalas and the talking doll. Times three.

Matthew Wilding reports stumbling onto an exhibit by six contemporary Egyptian artists (one of whom died in Tahrir Square) at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

I don’t know whether this exhibit was "good art" (though it's affiliation with the MFA infers it). I do know that it was incredibly effective. It was interesting and beautiful, and it made me relate to the core with people I very rarely find common ground with or think about.

Boston Daily totals up all the money spent on art-museum expansion in the Boston area over a decade, and comes up with a pretty large number.

Eeka, who wants to be a tour guide when she grows up, is putting together a list of Boston's Giant Heads, from the Creepy Baby Heads outside the MFA to the Sphinxy Arthur Fiedler Head on the Esplanade.

WBUR posts the naked truth about the local singer and an exhibit at the MFA - and how her husband got the guards to turn off the security cameras for a bit (hey, she doesn't go by the acronym AFP for nothing).

H/t Othemts.

Greg Cook takes a tour of the MFA's new Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, which has more gallery space than the ICA, says the MFA has found made "an elegant effort" to deal with its "deserved reputation for being slim in its contemporary art offerings and holdings."

"Milk: Bathroom," by Elizabeth Alexander. Photo by Greg Cook.

The other night, a bunch of local artists snuck into a pair of restrooms at the MFA and set up an impromptu gallery - in homage to a similar stunt 40 years ago at the museum. Greg Cook reports MFA guards were not amused:

At least three gentlemen from MFA security arrived as Cook spoke to the crowd packed into the hall outside the men's and women's rooms off a stairway down from the MFA's new Shapiro Family Courtyard. They generously let him say his piece, then as artists and audience moved along, MFA staff removed from the bathroom walls all the art by the participating artists.

Onto the next gallery. Part of a set by tbobtubb.

Cook's photo used by permission. Tbobtubb's posted under this Creative Commons license and tagged as universalhub on Flickr.

Historygradguy watched a restorer at work on a recent visit to the MFA.

Copyright Historygradguy. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

Historygradguy ambled around the MFA today.

Copyright Historygradguy. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

Dan Kennedy gets the scoop.

Greg Cook takes us on a tour of the MFA's new wing, ten years and $345 million in the making, which opens to the public on Nov. 20.

The MFA itself has its own introduction to the wing, narrated by director Malcolm Rogers.

Photo copyright Greg Cook. Posted with permission.

A federal appeals court in Boston ruled today the heir of a Jewish art collector in Vienna has no right to a painting by an early 20th-century expressionist that wound up at the MFA because she waited too long under Massachusetts law to file a claim.

It’s Boston Fashion Week and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is extending the celebration throughout October with two relevant exhibits, a party on the first of the month, an appearance by Don Ed Hardy on October 6, and a robust list of fashion-related events.

Read full article by John Stephen Dwyer

Greg Cook reports King Tut is threatening to curse the MFA for daring to suggest its Tomb 10A exhibit shows off "the greatest tomb ever uncovered:"

... The 14th century B.C. Egyptian pharaoh made his statement during a press conference held on the steps of the museum's State Street Corporation Fenway Entrance overnight. "Djehutynakht's tomb is pretty great," Tutankhamun said via an interpreter. "But the greatest ever uncovered? His tomb - Tomb 10A, as the MFA so inelegantly calls it - is like a firefly compared to the sun that is my tomb.” ...

WBUR reports on the first gallery being installed in the $500-million wing - featuring ship models.

John Stephen Dwyer considers the expansion projects at the MFA and the Gardner.

Want to buy a child? Seriously. It will only cost you a bag of millet. Leila was sold ... traded really. For a bag of food that would feed her family.

If you're not interested in purchasing a child, what about children who work as many hours a day as they are old just to support their family.

Joel Brown rounds up the speculation - some of which posits the MFA already had one; it just didn't know it.

John Carroll was less than impressed by Tina Brown's talk last night at the MFA:

Well the Missus and I trundled down to the Museum of Fine Arts Wednesday evening to catch its Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Celebrity Lecture featuring Daily Beast diva Tina Brown.

Of course it should've been called the Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Celebrity Commercial because Brown was there mostly to deliver a pitch for her new website, which she subsequently did in a straightforward and shameless fashion. ...

This morning, apparently. Anybody know more?

Joel Brown previews the upcoming new sections of MFA, which open April 23.