Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - Art of The Americas Wing

Art of The Americas Wing

The Art of the Americas Wing was designed in a restrained, contemporary style by the London architectural firm of Foster and Partners, under the directorship of Thomas T. Difraia. CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares Architects of Boston was the project's Architect of Record.

In 2006, groundbreaking ceremonies took place for the Art of the Americas Wing, which features art from North, South, and Central America. As part of the project, the adjacent garden courtyard was transformed into a climate-controlled year-round glass atrium enclosure, including restaurant seating. Landscape architects Gustafson Guthrie Nichol redesigned the Huntington Avenue and Fenway entrances, gardens, access roads, and interior courtyards.

The wing opened November 20, 2010, with free admission to the public. Mayor Thomas Menino declared it "Museum of Fine Arts Day," and more than 13,500 attended the festive opening. The day kicked off in the wing's enclosed glass-walled court with an ASL-interpreted speech by Malcolm Rogers. He spoke from the second-floor landing of the cantilevered glass staircase that connects the wing's three levels of galleries. “Our goal through this project is to make the MFA more accessible," said Rogers. “This is your museum."

Many of the wing's 53 galleries are dedicated to individual artists or artistic movements, including pre-Columbian arts, Maya ceramics, Native North American art, African-American artists, the colonial portraiture of John Singleton Copley and Gilbert Stuart, the silverware of Paul Revere, the Hudson River School of landscape painting, folk art, photography, and works by John Singer Sargent. Sargent's The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit is symmetrically flanked by the pair of tall ceramic vases which are depicted in the painting.

The wing's glass-walled outer hallways display several sculptures from the Museum's collection, including the once controversial original Bacchante and Infant Faun which had been sculpted by Frederick William MacMonnies for the garden court of the Boston Public Library.

Several galleries are devoted to art by Western Hemisphere artists of the 20th century. Industrial designers such as Charles and Ray Eames, Eva Zeisel, Eliot Noyes, and Russel Wright are represented in a gallery devoted to products designed for mass production.