{"id":739466,"date":"2026-07-02T18:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T18:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/739466\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T18:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T18:54:14","slug":"museum-of-fine-arts-boston-reimagines-america-on-its-250th-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/739466\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum of Fine Arts Boston Reimagines America on Its 250th Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"

News<\/a><\/p>\n

A Mohawk artist\u2019s bust of George Washington, a matrilineal home altar, and a Dunkin\u2019 cup are among the 400 objects in a new major reinstallation.<\/p>\n


\n \"Anna
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\"Museum
\n Installation view of Art of the Americas: 1700\u20131800 featuring Alan Michelson\u2019s \u201cHan\u00f6daga:yas (Town Destroyer): Reflect\u201d (2024) in front of Thomas Sully\u2019s \u201cThe Passage of Delaware\u201d (1819) (all photos Anna Lee\/Hyperallergic)<\/p>\n

A Native American shrine from 2025, a menagerie of needlework samples from 18th-century New England, and casta paintings from colonial Mexico stand only paces away from each other in a new exhibition in the Art of the Americas Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston. Unveiled during the museum\u2019s annual Juneteenth open house, Art of the Americas: 1700\u20131800<\/a> marks the first reinstallation in the wing\u2019s ground-level galleries.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The revamped gallery features over 400 objects sourced from North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, parts of East Asia, and other global touchpoints for the 18th-century Americas. Divided into eight themed sections, the display brings together newly acquired artworks with some of the most well-known pieces from the MFA\u2019s collection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The day after the unveiling, on June 20, the museum hosted an \u201cAmerica at 250\u201d celebration applauding the three-year effort forged by curators, museum staff, community members, scholars, and artists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Artist Hartman Deetz illustrates his matrilineal family tree and replicates a home altar that pays homage to his Italian, Irish, Wampanoag, and Californian identity.<\/p>\n

While the display is housed in and centers around the American wing\u2019s 18th-century galleries, the curators organized it with the Americas of today in mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to tell wider narratives that met our mission for the Art of the Americas, plural, not just the United States,\u201d Erica Hirshler, the Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings, told Hyperallergic, adding that the previous iteration of the gallery felt \u201cdated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first section of the gallery is themed \u201cPower and Resistance,\u201d prefacing one of the main motivations for the MFA\u2019s latest endeavor. By placing artworks from Native artists beside British-influenced artists, and Paul Revere\u2019s \u201cSons of Liberty Bowl\u201d (1768) beside a ceramic jar inscribed by enslaved poet and potter David Drake, the new arrangement considers artworks in relation to each other both formally and in dialogue with larger dynamics of authority and contested cultural narratives.<\/p>\n

\"\"A Dunkin\u2019 cup sits alongside 18th-century silverware and tea vessels in the \u201cSomething\u2019s Brewing\u201d section of the galleries.<\/p>\n

The display also emphasizes the inclusion of underrepresented perspectives in the annals of United States history. A few paces ahead of Thomas Sully\u2019s massive, iconic painting of George Washington, \u201cThe Passage of the Delaware\u201d (1819), is Mohawk artist Alan Michelson<\/a>\u2019s silver bust of the same president, \u201cHan\u00f6daga:yas (Town Destroyer): Reflect\u201d (2024). The title of Michelson\u2019s sculpture alludes to Washington\u2019s role in the destruction of dozens of Haudenosaunee towns, imploring viewers to reflect on the complicated legacies that underpin the construction of the American story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Between critical representations of colonial power and resistance, Hirshler also wanted to highlight some of the more lighthearted parts of the reinstallation. In the \u201cSomething\u2019s Brewing\u201d section of the gallery, a single Dunkin\u2019 cup is included as an artwork alongside silver vessels related to Boston\u2019s tea trade.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBoston runs on Dunkin\u2019,\u201d Hirshler laughed. \u201cIt\u2019s an important part of history.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"A line winds around the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on the morning of Juneteenth.<\/p>\n

During the planning process for the installation, the MFA made a historic decision of its own when the curators were offered a $400,000 federal grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Concerned with the strict compliance demands issued by the federal government, which has terminated hundreds of NEH grants<\/a> under the Trump administration, the museum turned down the offer and continued the project using other funding sources.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very proud of us for not taking that grant,\u201d Luc\u00eda Abramovich S\u00e1nchez, the curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, told Hyperallergic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt that the risk of having to follow the executive order would impede the work that we wanted to do,\u201d Hirshler added.<\/p>\n

For both curators, reimagining the Americas is more important now than ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that visitors leave with a deeper understanding of what America means,\u201d S\u00e1nchez said. \u201cWe are and have been interconnected with each other for a very long time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"News A Mohawk artist\u2019s bust of George Washington, a matrilineal home altar, and a Dunkin\u2019 cup are among…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-739466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}