MFA

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.

It needs to do more than just invite people to the museum itself, Third Decade writes:

... They have a great series of programs for kids, but where is the programming that engages young professionals or adults of color? Where's their support for any of the Boston Open Studios? If they want to engage people of color who are interested in the arts, why not support or have some connection to Roxbury, Dorchester, or JP Open Studios at least? Additionally, they missed a golden opportunity during Roxbury Film Festival. Hundreds of people of color, including myself, came to the museum to view some of the films being screened there. Not once was I asked to become a member nor did anyone suggest that I explore some of the collections or even the bookstore. Was the marketing department asleep for the entire year prior to the film festival? ...

Anali took in the MFA exhibit last week:

... There is a holiness to the exhibit. I felt like I was in church at certain points and found myself saying little prayers and feeling spiritually overwhelmed. ...

Dave Daniels writes:

If you've got an evil and sadistic brother like mine, it brings back memories of my little sister's doll's heads being removed from their bodies. And her youthful screams of horror. And a local dog running by with one of the heads in his mouth as he made for the forest with said severed heads. ...

Joel Brown reports on the museum's re-opened Fenway entrance and new visitor center, which reporters, employees and big donors got a tour of today - and which everybody can see for free on Sunday:

... My favorite part of the Fenway project is "Day and Night," a two-part sculpture by Antonio Lopez Garcia, which has been outside the Huntington doors for a few months and flanks the re-opened Fenway entrance. Even [museum honcho] Rogers refers to the sculpture as "the giant baby heads," which sounds hilarious when he says it in that plummy accent of his. The sculpture adds an odd, arty, irreverent tone to the scene, which helps set off the forbidding monumentality of that face of the museum, with its 22 Ionic columns, each 36 feet tall. The baby heads are only 8 feet tall, and weigh about a ton and a half each, but they make a dramatically wacky statement in their present position. Kudos to Gail and Ernest von Metzsch for the gift. ...

Geoff Edgers repors on a dispute between people in wheelchairs and the museum. The museum says that, effective this week, it will, upon request, send a contractor out to help somebody in a wheelchair get through the construction zone.

Geoff Edgers explains their meaning.

Thomas Garvey: Have the folks singing State Street's praises actually seen the monstrosity Malcolm Rogers is planning to build?

... Admittedly, the State Street moolah will only fund the $500 million monster indirectly - but really, if it was ever appropriate to "starve the beast," this is just such a time. ...

Joel Brown is shocked, shocked that a newspaper in Idaho misspells the name of the street the MFA is on.

Larry Davidson was enjoying the Americans in Paris exhibit when the PA started blaring an emergency was underway and everybody had to leave the building:

... There were a lot of foreign visitors, many of whom were understandably confused. We got to the escalators, with a couple of hundred people ahead of us, and noticed that everyone was slowly lined up waiting patiently for the down escalator, while the up escalator was dutifully carrying nobody on its way upstairs. So we promptly pushed the red stop button and walked down, followed by half of other guests. Why didn't anyone else think of that? ...

Outside, he saw six fire trucks arrive.

Andrew Watson and clan spent yesterday checking out gardens - in particular, the Fenway Victory Gardens and the Japanese Garden at the MFA - where they ran into a toddler restroom issue. No, not with the toddler in question, but with an MFA employee who told Watson he could not bring his two-year-old daughter into the men's room to wash her hands:

... Now, I can see that, at some point in Maddie's life, I won't be able to take her into a mens' room to wash her hands. But I think that point is has yet to arrive for our two-year-old. What if it had been just me and her at the museum? Had she needed a diaper change, where should I have done it? Would she be allowed to wash her hands? ...

Museum policy or idiosyncratic employee? The Watsons' MFA membership hinges on the answer.

On Pelican In Her Piety, Jason says go see the Hockney exhibit:

... It was one of the best special exhibitions I have ever seen and is certainly one of the best exhibitions the MFA has put on it a very very long time. Perhaps the reign of Degas, sailboats, and Ralph Lauren's cars is over. ...

Bill Ives says the Facets of Cubism exhibit is worth seeing:

... I am struck by the structural and sculptural style of the artists with very strong page placements. ...

Proving once again that truth is stranger than fiction, a Rhode Island lawyer wants the MFA (and other museums) to sell off Persian antiquities and hand the proceeds over to victims of Hamas terror attacks on the theory that Hamas is partially funded by the Iranian government, and that government is the rightful owner of the artifacts.

Via Joel Brown.

Be of Be Be Re finds it sad that the Museum of Fine Arts has resorted to things like tapa-and-cosmos singles nights to draw in the younger crowd. Setting aside the issue of whether lower admission prices might work just as well, she writes:

... Give me the old Free Wednesday Nights in the East-Asian wing where a girl could get picked up without pretense by a scruffy guy clutching one from Mishima's oeuvre interrupting her reverie over wood grain patterns in block prints to ask if she was into knot-tying. ...

Moxie and her boyfriend escort a female friend, seven months past her divorce, to the MFA's First Friday singles thing:

... It was really loud and crowded. The shark tanky behavior of the men didn't make T feel attractive, it just made her sad. Lunchboy stepped up and tried to take her on a scouting mission, but they ended up retreating to the America's Cup exhibit because T loves boats and the boats made her happier than the men upstairs. ...

John isn't thinking so highly of the MFA's impending addition or its architect, Norman Foster:

... If you've seen the design, and know a bit about architecture, you quickly realize he's basically just taken leftover drawings from his work at the British Museum, added a couple of extra frames of glass, and pawned it off as something new.

Yes, Boston is a great place for a building enclosed in glass. Just perfect. (Bring a sweater on your visit to the new MFA, if you go in January.) ...

Joel heads to the MFA to for a press conference and exhibit tour by Bill Koch, the latest rich guy to lend the museum some of his favorite expensive things:

... I was reminded of the scene at the end of "Citizen Kane" where the great man's vast and jumbled lifetime of acquisitions is being packed up after his death.

But after hearing Koch talk about nearly each and every one of the items on display - leading our tour himself, he was still working his way through the western room when I left to catch a train - it's clear that Koch really does love this stuff, he's not piling it up just to satisfy his ego. And if your Rosebud is a ravishing Modigliani nude, well, that's maybe not so bad. ...