Nick Cave</a> extended the lifespan of discarded objects by transforming them into a surreal, otherworldly costume that asserts the value of Black life. The intensive time and labor that goes into creating textiles and fiber art is evident in examples by <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/Sheila-Hicks/2E47EE7B97F7CEAB">Sheila Hicks</a>, <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/Howardena-Pindell/99B0D8738EE48AD8">Howardena Pindell</a>, and <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/Jane-Sauer/9D79DA8D82E41B09">Jane Sauer</a>. Through these works and many others visitors can consider how different forms of care may inspire new models for living and feeling—now and in the future.</p><p><br></p>" itemprop="description" />

John Singleton Copley</a>’s Watson and the Shark (1778) reverberate in J. M. W <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/Joseph-Mallord-William-Turner/2A123FB50C356620">Turner’s 1840 Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), which itself has influenced art created in the 21st century.</p><p>Presented here for the first time in New England, <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/John-Akomfrah/CDA0053536ED18E9">John Akomfrah</a>’s iconic three-channel film installation Vertigo Sea (2015) expands on the themes at the heart of the two earlier works, exploring humanity’s tumultuous relationship with the sea and its creatures, and the ocean’s role in the history of slavery. In Some People Have Spiritual Eyes I and II (2020), photographer Ayana V. <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/Ayana-Vellissia-Jackson/1C969D069E73409F">Jackson takes these ideas in a new direction. Jackson’s exploration of divinity, femininity, and destiny through self-portraiture is inspired by Drexciya, a mythical aquatic utopia populated by descendants of the pregnant African women who lost their lives in the Atlantic Ocean during the Middle Passage.</p><p>“Deep Waters: Four Artists and the Sea” invites visitors to consider and reflect on the conversation between these works of art and their makers. Each artist offers a unique perspective drawn from their lived experience, yet all are attuned to the poetics and histories of the sea—from its glittering surfaces and unfathomable depths to its inhabitants and ghosts; from it as a site of memory, mourning, and fragility to a symbol of resilience and possible futures.</p><p><br></p>" itemprop="description" />

Wilson’s work</a>, co-organized by the MFA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Featuring approximately 110 works by the artist in a wide range of media—prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, and illustrated books—the exhibition explores the many ways Wilson called attention to racial, social, and economic injustices through his art. Challenging both biases and omissions, Wilson explored subjects that include anti-Black violence, the civil rights movement, labor, and family life—with a particular focus on fatherhood. Portraits like Julie and Becky (1956–78) and his Young Americans suite of life-size portraits (about 1972–75) celebrate the essential humanity of Wilson’s family and friends, while other works like Deliver Us from Evil (1943) and The Trial (1951) depict the heinous impacts of systemic prejudice and racism. Wilson’s work speaks to shared experiences, while also displaying his personal search for identity as an artist, Black man, parent, and American.</p><p>A significant number of the works are drawn from the MFA’s collection, including a number of early self-portraits and depictions of Martin Luther King Jr. The centerpiece of the Boston presentation of “Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson” is a reduced-scale bronze maquette for Eternal Presence, the monumental sculpture installed in 1987 on the grounds of the National Center of Afro-American Artists (NCAAA) in Roxbury. Fondly called the “Big Head” by many local residents, the colossal sculpture was described by Wilson as “an image of universal dignity.”</p><p>A resident of Brookline for decades, Wilson had an influence and impact on artists and community across Boston that remains deep today. These ties are explored further through community involvement in the exhibition planning process, the accompanying publication, and public programs that take place during the run of the exhibition.</p><p><br></p>" itemprop="description" />

photographer Robert Frank</a>’s (1924–2019) birth, this exhibition features the personal scrapbook he made for his first wife, titled Mary’s Book. Created in 1949 for Mary Lockspeiser, the album consists of 74 small photographs with Frank’s written inscriptions. They reveal his appreciation for the poetic resonance of objects and spaces. Many of the photographs are devoid of people, although their presence is felt everywhere. He muses on the chairs and streets of Paris with messages interspersed for Mary. The book is a reflection on solitary contemplation that reads like a lyrical poem and compelling personal photographic sequence.</p><p>This one-of-a-kind, handmade album represents a formative moment in Frank’s career as he experiments with text and image juxtaposition. Robert Frank: Mary's Book includes a selection of spreads from the scrapbook in the Museum's collection as well as photographs Frank took in Paris, on loan from the artist’s foundation.</p><p>A publication based on the exhibition will be published in early 2025, written by Kristen Gresh, the MFA’s Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs and Stuart Alexander, a Robert Frank scholar. This is the first time Mary’s Book will be fully reproduced.</p><p><br></p>" itemprop="description" />

Van Gogh</a> (1853–1890) once wrote, “What I’m most passionate about…is the portrait, the modern portrait.” This passion flourished between 1888 and ’89 when, during his stay in Arles, in the South of France, the artist created a number of portraits of a neighboring family—the postman Joseph Roulin; his wife, Augustine; and their three children: Armand, Camille, and Marcelle. Van Gogh’s tender relationship with the postman and his family, and his groundbreaking portrayals of them, are at the heart of this exhibition, which is the first dedicated to the Roulin portraits and the deep bonds of friendship between the artist and this family.</p><p>Visitors can see approximately 20 works by Van Gogh, including the MFA’s iconic portraits Postman Joseph Roulin (1888) and Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse) (1889) as well as important loans from museums such as the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Art Institute of Chicago, and Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Additionally, key works of earlier Dutch art and Japanese woodblock prints—both of which profoundly informed Van Gogh’s portrait practice—provide critical insight into elements of the artist’s creative process. Letters written by Postman Roulin bring to life the deep bond of friendship and a major turning point in Van Gogh’s life, as he moved to a new city and grappled with his mental health. He dreamed of creating a vibrant community of artists in Arles, which led to a visit by fellow painter Paul Gauguin, whose work is included in this exhibition.</p><p>Despite imagining himself as a husband and father, Van Gogh never married or had children. As he came to terms with this, he found comfort in his relationship with the Roulins; his portraits of them capture an intimacy that resonates across place and time in families of all kinds—biological, chosen, or observed. This exhibition gives visitors the most in-depth look yet at the emotional underpinnings of some of the beloved artist’s most widely recognized paintings.</p><p>Organized in partnership with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, “Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits” is accompanied by a forthcoming catalogue from MFA Publications.</p><p><br></p>" itemprop="description" />

Helen Frankenthaler</a>, <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/Elaine-de-Kooning/D3ED075C8D3171C0">Elaine de Kooning</a>, <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/Jacqueline-Humphries/319BB64700A31012">Jacqueline Humphries</a>, <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/Amy-Sillman/D613848BB0064E70">Amy Sillman</a>, <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/Elizabeth-Peyton/E349B92A13B31C49">Elizabeth Peyton</a>, and <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/Cecilia-Vicuna/9F128DD8B2432239">Cecilia Vicuña</a> round out the display. Taken together, these works offer a compelling look at how 20th-century modernism intersects with depictions of the feminine, the body, and landscape in the art of our time.</p><p><br></p>" itemprop="description" />

Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch</a> (1824–1903), Anton van Rappard (1858–1892), and <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/Anton-Mauve/D88321AE6B36D20D">Anton Mauve</a> (1838–1888). Though they are not now household names in the United States, these figures had a profound impact on the artists of their time and future generations. Mauve, in particular, played a key role in Van Gogh’s early life and career. Van Gogh himself is also represented here, with two early works.</p><p>The Hague School artists focused on farmers, fisherfolk, laborers, mills, canals, and dunes as their subjects, in part to convey a patriotic love of the countryside. In the densely populated and rapidly industrializing Netherlands, rural subjects recalled a simpler time and a simpler way of life—both of which were quickly disappearing. This exhibition shines a light once more on a neglected group of artists who, working in a changing time, captured vanishing ways of life using modern artistic styles as their tools.</p><p><br></p>" itemprop="description" />

Maria Cazzato</a> considers the representation of Catholic martyrs to interrogate oppressive contemporary body norms. Ian Choi paints herself among Korean silks and American fabrics to underscore her layered and textured identity—the product of movement between two distinct cultures. Guadalupe Najar’s sculptural pieces reference her ancestors’ material histories and her self-mythologization within equine culture. Intimate and colorful, Bertil Chappuis Muñoz’s portraits exist in active dialogue with their subjects, encouraging free and fluid interpretations.</p><p>Organized with support from Tufts University Art Galleries, “Fragments of Self: SMFA at Tufts Juried Student Exhibition” is the latest in a series of exhibitions that reflects the Museum’s commitment to the next generation of promising artists and curators. It continues the historical relationship between the Museum and the SMFA, which dates back to the school’s founding in 1876.</p><p><br></p>" itemprop="description" />

Tony Cokes</a> (b. 1956) and <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Organization/Museum-of-Fine-Arts--Boston/"/Artist/Oscar-Munoz/C3C3C8A602054D16">Oscar Muñoz</a> (b. 1951). Created in the last decade, the films grapple with the duality of utopia and dystopia, expressing the artists’ senses of how idealistic visions of society often collide with harsh realities. Utopian dreams can promise a future without oppression and celebrate freedom of expression, yet achieving these ideals frequently comes into conflict with underlying dystopian truths such as systems of control, state surveillance, and deep inequality.</p><p>Both artists use language to explore these issues in their work: Muñoz’s Distopía (2014) centers on British author George Orwell’s 1949 novel 1984, and Cokes’s Untitled (m.j.: the symptom) (2020) borrows text from Mark Fisher’s 2009 essay collection The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson. Although video is an unusual medium for the written word, these two videos brilliantly incorporate the visual treatment of text while exploring knowledge production, political satire, fame, and government control.</p><p><br></p>" itemprop="description" />