A few moments of contemplation, allowing ourselves to absorb the various works of art we had just witnessed across the Museum’s galleries – and the warmth that comes with sunshine after the rain.
And then came the bunnies… 
There is a bunny hiding in this picture; an adorable little troublemaker, disrupting the peace.
Tenshin-en
The Garden of the Heart of Heaven
Designed by Kinsaku Nakane of Kyoto, Japan
Dedicated October 24, 1988
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
May 2nd, 2017
”Gustave Doré (1832–1883), known primarily for his book illustrations, prints, and paintings, turned to sculpture late in his career. It was only in 1871 that he began to learn to model, and he exhibited his first sculpture at the Salon of 1877.
This plaster relief is the second version of a sculpture inspired by his 1879 painting of the Death of Orpheus. Doré used the same background and composition in both reliefs; however, here the dead Orpheus is absent and the female woodland figures are not armed. He has depicted a Bacchic dance of the Maenads, followers of Dionysus, god of the Orphic religion, who in a delirious frenzy killed Orpheus. This relief may have been intended to serve as an architectural decoration.”
Maenads in a Wood, 1879
Gustave Doré
The painting in reference and a study (the only copies I was able to trace on-line): 
Gustave Doré
Study for La mort d’Orphée, 1879
Charcoal and watercolor with gouache on thick card
Gustave Doré
La mort d’Orphée, 1885
Wash and gouache
”Josiah McElheny created this mirrored installation with a critical eye on histories of innovation, ornament and display that shaped European Modernism. He hand-blew each glass vessel based on sleek Italian, Austrian, Czech and Scandinavian designs from 1910-90. Then, the precisely positioned them within this polished cube to capture their endless repetition as infinite assembly lines of 20th century elegance.”
Endlessly fascinating.
Josiah McElheny
Endlessly Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism, 2007
Blown mirrored glass, mirrors, metal, wood and electric lighting
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
May 2nd, 2017
European Painting 1550–1700 and Hanoverian Silver hang on damask-covered walls in the William I. Koch Gallery, nothing less for a space designed to resemble a grand hall of a European palace. Looking at the round tables, I thought it must double up as an event space. And, while, it is difficult to appreciate the art individually (too much, too high, some maneuvering necessary to avoid hitting the tables), seen as a whole everything seems to work. Besides… 
… it leads to the Monet gallery. The MFA boasts one of the largest collections of Claude Monet’s work outside France, with a whole gallery dedicated to the artist! Below, just two of the works I particularly enjoy – the first, for its virtuosity and splendid kimono and the second, for its hazy, dreamy mood:
Claude Monet
La Japonaise (Camille Monet in Japanese Costume), 1876
Oil on canvas
Claude Monet
Rouen Cathedral, Façade, 1894
Oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
May 2nd, 2017
Yet they happened in a not so distant past. Others are happening today. Such is the human nature, at once atrocious and compassionate, conniving and benevolent, with a remarkable capacity to adapt and re-write history at will.
“Memory Unearthed” offered an extraordinarily rare glimpse of life inside the Lodz Ghetto during its existence from 1940 to 1944, through the lens of Polish Jewish photojournalist Henryk Ross (1910–1991).
Memory Unearthed
The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross (ran through July 30, 2017)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
May 2nd, 2017
Sleep my child and peace attend thee,
All through the night
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night – [Verses from a Welsh lullaby translated into English]
Hans Memling
Christ Blessing, 1481
Oil on panel
Bed
England (London), ca. 1800-10
Oak and pine veneered with mahogany, ebonized pine, patinated bronze, gilded metal, modern upholstery
This bed is among the most original pieces of English Regency furniture. Dominant in English interiors from about 1800 to 1830, the Regency style perpetuated the classical taste of the late 18th century but was more academic and archaeologically correct. This bed closely resembles furnishings designed by Thomas Hope – collector, connoisseur and a pivotal figure in the classical revival of Regency England- for one of his residences. Its architectural form and bronze mounts derive from ancient and Renaissance models. The greyhounds, however, are inspired by medieval tomb sculpture and exemplify the more romantic interpretation of historical sources characteristic of Hope’s influential furniture designs. The bed may have been used for resting – a day bed – or for sleeping. 
Sweet (day)dreams from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
May 2nd, 2017
Art
All Art Has Been Contemporary
Neon, transformer, clips; 1999, fabricated in 2011
Maurizio Nannucci
Darkness Made Visible, featuring:
Blue (1993), film
Derek Jarman
Spiderman (2015), video installation
Mark Bradford
The exhibition pairs Derek Jarman’s final feature-length film Blue (1993) with Mark Bradford’s video installation Spiderman (2015)—both riveting first-person accounts of the AIDS crisis that are distinctly subjective, lyrical, humorous, and dark. Through imageless projection and bold voiceovers, they both expose and defy the forces that have marginalized queer bodies since the 1980s.
Visual and emotional stimulation at the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
May 2nd, 2017
Judy Dater
Imogen and Twinka, 1974
Gelatin silver print
Judy Dater is one of a younger generation of female photographers who credited Cunningham with having had a major impact on their work and on them as individuals. In this image, Dater’s most famous portrait, we see a sprightly Imogen, wearing her usual long dark dress and peace signs on her camera straps, with her favourite model, Twinka. Each appraises the other across a massive tree trunk in Yosemite – one young and the other old, one clothed and the other nude, a study in contrasts with a generous dose of humour mixed in.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
May 2nd, 2017
Walking into the galleries of the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, I could hardly believe we were still in the same Museum. 
Tara Donovan
Untitled, 2003
Styrofoam cups, hot glue
This undulating lattice of styrofoam drinking cups with glowing hollows and pliable rims was made to expand into the architecture of this particular space. To discover how they react to light and space in transcendent ways, Donovan experiments with huge volumes of manufactured materials. Clustered with an almost viral repetition, the cups above assume forms that both evoke natural systems and seem to defy the laws of nature. ”My work is mimicking the ways of nature, not necessarily mimicking nature” she notes. Here, it might suggest cellular growth or even the density of molecules in rolling clouds.
Jonathan Borofsky
I Dreamed I Could Fly, 2000
Acrylic on fiberglass and incandescent lamp
Borofsky’s work is driven by the ideals of equality and harmony. Made especially for the wide open spaces of the Linde Family Wing, these flying figures ”are able to rise up and look down upon the whole planet… [they] see and feel that human beings are all connected together and that we are all one – no divisions and no walls.”
Always a pleasure to discover a work by Borofsky; you can see two more works we came across in earlier trips, in Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
May 2nd, 2017
”Botticelli and the Search for the Divine” was MFA’s main exhibition during our visit, and the ”largest, most important display of Botticelli’s works in the US” at that. While Botticelli’s subject matter, i.e. religious (Christian) imagery, leaves me unaffected, I can’t but admire his artistic dexterity, no doubt cultivated and enhanced by the support of his patrons, the wealthy Medici family, headed by Lorenzo the Magnificent. And, while his patrons largely dictated what the artist would create, they also provided the means for some of his most emblematic works. For instance, on Virgin and Child (Madonna of the Book), the artist used rare, expensive materials: green pigment from the mineral malachite; pure gold; and, most valuable of all, pulverized lapis lazuli, imported from Afghanistan, for the deep ultramarine of the Virgin’s robe. Materials that the majority of artists could very rarely afford – if at all.
But first, in order to reach the exhibition, one had to walk through the Museum’s Rotunda – in itself a work of art, decorated as it is with John Singer Sargent’s murals.
”In 1916, the MFA’s Trustees invited Sargent to decorate three lunettes in the Rotunda. Sargent offered a counter-proposal, suggesting that the Rotunda’s coffered ceiling be redesigned to allow space for a program of sculptural reliefs representing various classical gods and heroes. Using a scale model, Sargent ultimately decided that the limited daylight coming through the oculus would compromise the reliefs’ visibility from the floor. He did integrate some reliefs into his overall program for the Rotunda, but Sargent instead embarked upon a series of paintings for the space, which was unveiled to great fanfare in 1921, along with his designs for the surrounding balustrades and the casts of Venus and Minerva seen in the niches above.”
Sandro Botticelli, Virgin and Child (Madonna of the Book), ca. 1478–80
Tempera and gold on panel
Sandro Botticelli and workshop, Venus, ca. 1484-90. Oil on canvas, transferred from panel.
While this particular Venus (and another, now in Berlin) have been attributed directly to Botticelli in the past, some experts today regard them as painted under the master’s supervision by assistants.
Sandro Botticelli, Minerva and the Centaur, ca. 1482
Tempera on canvas
Sandro Botticelli, Saint Augustine in his Study, ca. 1480
Detached fresco
May 2nd, 2017
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