Places to Visit: Art Museums in Boston
There is something about autumn in the Northeast that makes it a perfect time to visit art museums. From the famous Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, to the Yale University Art Gallery in Hartford, Connecticut, there’s no shortage of beautiful museums up and down the coast. This season, I made my way to Boston to spend a day at the Museum of Fine Arts.
A general admission ticket allows you to leave and come back throughout the day, which turned out to be ideal as I also had tickets to the nearby Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum later in the afternoon. I absolutely loved this flexibility - it made my visit feel less like a check-list and more like an adventure. Almost immediately, my first exhibit in the MFA was the musical instruments collection, which included European violins, African drums, and even Scottish bagpipes lining the walls, surrounding exquisitely crafted keyboard and harpsichords. Small info cards indicated which composers might have used each instrument; It’s one thing to see an instrument behind glass, but another to imagine the music it once made, or the hands that might have played it.
Next, I wandered into the Impressionism gallery, one of my favorite parts of the MFA. Seeing Monet’s landscapes in person never fails to make me stop and appreciate the subtle vibrancy of the light that shimmers across water and foliage in a way photographs can’t quite capture (trust me, I’ve tried). A young student artist was painting one of the works, and I watched her careful attention to every stroke. In a room full of mostly older adults, I was so glad to see art continuing to inspire today’s youth. (How many times have you heard “classical music is dead” chanted to the younger generation? It isn’t true, it isn’t true!)
Degas has been a favorite artist of mine for many years, and I love the way he brings the beautiful culture of ballet to life. The MFA has a bronze cast of The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (similar to the Met), with her careful posture, the hopeful yet tentative expression of a young ballet student. It’s fascinating to compare it to paintings in the same gallery, seeing how Monet and Degas each captured movement, light, and life in their own unique way.
After a few hours across multiple exhibits, I made my way to the gift shop and bookshop, which are worth a visit in their own right. The MFA’s bookshop is surprisingly thorough, full of art books ranging from monographs on individual artists to deep dives into art history and exhibition catalogs. I spent far too long thumbing through titles I didn’t even know I wanted, imagining which ones Composition Corner could review! The gift shop offers everything from jewelry and stationery to small decorative items inspired by the museum’s collections, making it easy to take a piece of the museum home without spending a fortune.
I then wandered over to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which is just a short walk away. Many people have felt its popularity has increased in recent years thanks to the Netflix special on the infamous and unsolved 1990 art heist, but visiting in person is an experience all its own. The museum is housed in a stunning Venetian-style palace, and every single room is a carefully curated work of art. You can wander through intimate galleries filled with paintings, sculptures, and decorative objects, or pause in the lush courtyard garden, which changes plants every month. Unlike the larger, more traditional museums, the Gardner invites a more quieter, more personal encounter with art that feels almost more like visiting someone’s home than a museum.
Why am I sharing all this? I am not a museum guide, or a docent, and there are significantly more thorough visits shared online. I brought my parents with me to the museum. I’m sharing this because my father, who’s lived just outside Boston for over 20 years, said to me “I had no idea we had such great art here!” “This was a perfect afternoon.” “I can’t believe we’ve never gone here before.”
You don’t have to be in Boston to find a great art museum near you. Search your local area, stop by in any season, and have your own perfect afternoon.
