Word: mfa
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There are two ways to approach the annual “Art in Bloom” festival at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). For the artistically snobbish the event—which invites New England Gardening Clubs to interpret the MFA’s paintings in flower arrangements—is a chance to scoff at the genteel world of Gardening Clubs and Ladies’ Societies and their decidedly bourgeois tastes...
...this way, the MFA could be accused of market games, for chances are that an interactive guitar show or a glimpse into our forebearers living room will bring more dollars and people to the museum than a huge exhibition of Greek amphora vases. The trend at the MFA has been to make art approachable. The Monet blockbuster in 2000 did not represent a challenge for aesthetic appreciation, as one doesn’t need to understand color theory to appreciate rainbow-colored water lilies...
...MFA has stepped boldly into the realm of all-inclusive art. Curators choose to place value not on the technique present in each work of art but on the objects importance as a cultural artifact. Does this redefinition mean that a slaves quilt ought to receive the same artistic consideration as a Vermeer or a Raphael? The MFA itself offers few clues. Folk art, according to the MFA, is art for the people by the people, a visual demonstration of America’s democratic values. All Americans, at least in MFA literature, can produce art. Theory aside...
...each room, the exhibit becomes more and more of a collection of repeating images: the train, the barn house, the American flag, Lincoln and Washington. Fading wooden dolls of soldiers and presidents fail to inspire, as do depictions of biblical stories in quilt form. To be valid Americana, the MFA must pull the exhibit out of its lily-white Northeastern provincialism. Harriet Powers, born a slave in Athens, Georgia, becomes the panacea. Her quilt depicts biblical scenes, natural events, and features tales of farming life. While the MFA calls the quilt extraordinary, the quilt appears to vary little from...
...white and blue cornfields and oceans, baskets, quilts, pots and portraits: this is America, the unprofessional artists’ legacy. The MFA certainly has a collection for and by the people, but for the price of admission, a trip to Grandma’s attic might better fill the yearning for Americana...