Chief among the changes is the provision of a suite of large galleries for the display of contemporary art from the museum’s permanent collection.
This in itself is momentous.
The MFA has never been known for its interest in living artists. Internationally, it has a reputation for being one of the world’s greatest museums, but also one of the most aesthetically conservative. Even the MFA’s renowned Impressionist holdings are almost all innocuously rural. Its 20th-century holdings are feeble.
All this makes the opening of a contemporary art wing a very different project from the Art of the Americas Wing. American art is an area in which the MFA already had credibility. The museum could afford to take risks, the biggest of which was the conceptual leap from “American art’’ to “Art of the Americas.’’
If that wing was all about investing boldly in order to expand aggressively, the new Linde Family Wing is about setting up a savings account. The simple act of doing it feels good and full of hope.
The result is not likely to blow your socks off. It’s not the world’s greatest collection. But I believe it has been done well.
Above all, the new display feels original. It’s not a mail-order display of predictable names, orthodox layouts. Rather, it feels as if it has sprouted organically from inside the MFA - although with an eye on neighboring museums, such as the Institute of Contemporary Art - and is the product of its curators’ own intelligent thinking.
The works on show are not embarrassed about being in a universal museum, or about sharing space with great works of 19th-century art or Asian art, or with centuries of fashion, craft, and design.
On the contrary, many of the works have been chosen because they have real links with other parts of the collection. For instance, a dress from the fashion and textile department with a design based on Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can images is displayed here, in a gallery partly devoted to Pop Art. Smart.
