Museum of Fine Art

Obviously, my hobby and passion is fishing. As I have mentioned before, I also love history. I have taken many daytrips to visit Battleship Cove, Lexington and Concord, and done the Freedom Trail at least five times. One of my favorite places to visit is the Museum of Fine Art in Boston.

On Wednesday night Laurie and I went. She took this week off from work and I had Thursday off so neither of us had to get up early Thursday.  I will not bore you with all the details such as hours, directions etc…The website has all the important information including floor plans. www.mfa.org

Here is one important detail. Admission is $25 for an adult. However on Wednesdays after 4 pm the museum is by donation only. It is open until 9:45, so there is plenty of time to see everything, even getting there at 4 pm. Instead of “donating” we rented to audio guides ($6 each). Many of the museum pieces have numbers next to them. You punch in the number of the piece and you can hear a short narrative about it.

If you haven’t studied the floor plan ahead of time, it is a good idea to do so before you start your tour. There is so much to see, you can’t see it all before you start to get sore feet or bored. As interesting as it all is, your mind (or at least mine) can only take so much information overload. We hit the exhibits we most want to see first and go from there.

John Hancock

We started at the far corner of the floor. This is where the impressionist paintings are. More specificly, we wanted to see the Monets. There are about five Monets in the room. The Monets are in the European section. I enjoy this because every painter you have ever heard of such as Degas and Van Goh to name a few. There are some paintings going as far back as the early Renaissance. It is pretty awesome to be standing next to a painting a thousand years old.

 After we visited the European masters, we switched our focus to American Art. For me this means finding the Gilbert Stuart paintings. Stuart was the number one portrait painted during Revolutionary War times. All the painitings of Washington, Adams, and Revere in your history books are from Gilbert Stuart. I enjoy these paintings of American heros. Other American painters including Bierstadt ( western landscapes) are represented.

Blocks from Temple of Athena at Assos

Next up we went to Ancient Art.  Some of the ancient stuff is a little boring to me such as pottery. However some “art” is really historic artifacts.  There are helmets and a shield from Greek soldiers. There are busts of Homer, Augustus Caesar, and many of the Greek and Roman gods of mythology. There are blocks from the Temple of Athena at Assos.

Ancient Egypt is well represented with an entire mummy. There are canopic jars. There is a head of Ramsess III. Also there blocks from an ancient gate leading to a temple.

Because of sore feet and hunger we stayed about four hours. We saw everything we wanted. We skipped out on sections of “ Jewelry”  and “Musical Instruments.” The museum may be considered “fine art” but for a history buff, there are so many really neat must see artifacts… Who doesn’t like mummies?