Every Wednesday after 4pm the Museum of Fine Arts lets all us penniless people inside for FREE and there just so happens to be some sick talks, tours and happenings coinciding each week.
July is also your last chance to catch a couple choice exhibits happening there. Permission To Be Global/Prácticas Globales shares with us 60 contemporary Latin American works of art from the 1960s to right now, including sculpture, painting, photography, video, installation and performance art. This is over on 7/13 so don’t delay! // While you’re there check out their exhibit Quilts and Color which is packed with deceptively psychedelic quilts hailing from the 19th and 20th centuries generously on display thanks to the Pilgrim/Roy collection. This good stuff ends on 7/27.
Here’s your guide to a FREE aesthetic education at the MFA this July.
\ Wednesday, 7/2 //
6-7pm GALLERY TALK: D is for Design @Sharf Visitor Center — Learn about this cool-ass exhibit from the curator, Meghan Melvin! We’re talkin’ almost 30 works of design on paper spanning the 16th century to the 20th, with each representing a different artist, architect or designer in an alphabet of design.
6, 6:30 & 7:15pm SPOTLIGHT TALK: The Diana Automation: A Self-Propelled Drinking Game @Gallery 144 Spend 15 minutes with a culturally conversant member of staff and find out this silver statue of Diana mounted on a stag is not quite what it seems. Remove the stag’s head and you’ll find it hollow…the hidden wind-up mechanism makes it mobile. Once it lands the closest person must down all that vino residing in the belly of the beast!
6-9pm Drawing in the Galleries If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at sketching, EVERY WEEK the MFA is providing you with the tools, the space, a subject and even an instructor to give it a shot! Live (clothed) models or a museum object will be provided as your subject. This is open to amateurs and pros alike. Seriously, you’ve got nothing to lose here!
6:15-7:15pm GALLERY TOUR: Highlights of the Museum Collections Head to the Sharf Visitor Center and take an hourlong walkthrough of the MFA’s favorites works.
\ Wednesday, 7/9 //
6, 6:30 & 7:15pm SPOTLIGHT TALK: “This I Accomplish,” Harriet Powers’ Pictorial Quilt @Gallery 237 — Spend 15 minutes getting a rundown of Powers’ comforting narrative from one of the MFA’s informed and then check out the rest of this incredible exhibit that ends 7/27.
6-7pmGALLERY TALK: She Sells Sea Shells: Commerce, Trade and Industry in Coastal New England @Sharf Visitor Center Asst Curator in Art of the Americas, Caroline Cole takes us on a trip down the New England coastline by way of the MFA’s Art of Americas collection and better understand the history and modernization of trade and industry by sea.
6-9pm Drawing in the Galleries If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at sketching, EVERY WEEK the MFA is providing you with the tools, the space, a subject and even an instructor to give it a shot! Live (ahem, clothed) models or a museum object will be provided as your subject. This is open to amateurs and pros alike. Seriously, you’ve got nothing to lose here!
6:15pm GALLERY TOUR: Highlights of the Museum Collections Head to the Sharf Visitor Center and take an hourlong walkthrough of the MFA’s favorites works.
\ Wednesday, 7/16 //
6-7pm GALLERY TALK: Samba Spirit: Modern Afro Brazilian Art @Sharf Visitor Center The MFA continues to broaden their worldly art scope and this time they’ve brought in a collection of various 20th-century Brazilian painters and sculptors of African descent, each sharing their own microcosms. Let Karen Quinn (Curator of Paintings) talk you through the works by artists like Heitor dos Prazeres, Maria Auxiliadora da Silva, and Waldemiro de Deu.
6, 6:30 & 7:15pm SPOTLIGHT TALK: A Modern Portrait: Van Gogh’s “Postman Joseph Roulin” @Gallery 255 Find out more about the man “with a head like Socrates” who was one of only a few true-blue friends Vincent van Gogh had in his lifetime. During Vincent’s tempestuous stay in Arles, Roulin and his family not only posed for Vincent regularly but they stood by him as the rest of the town successfully petitioned to have him locked up following his infamous ear incident. The man in this painting is partially responsible for the creation of one of the most famous and celebrated artist’s periods in history. All this from a postal worker…
6-9pm Drawing in the Galleries If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at sketching, EVERY WEEK the MFA is providing you with the tools, the space, a subject and even an instructor to give it a shot! Live models or a museum object will be provided as your subject. This is open to amateurs and pros alike. Seriously, you’ve got nothing to lose here! Perves beware: models will be clothed.
6:15pm GALLERY TOUR: Highlights of the Museum Collections Head to the Sharf Visitor Center and take an hourlong walkthrough of the MFA’s favorites works.
\ Wednesday, 7/23 //
6-7pm GALLERY TALK: Jamie Wyeth @Sharf Visitor Center: Elliot Bostwick Davis, Chair of the Art of the Americas Department takes us through the museums brand spankin new retrospective exhibit on six decades worth of work by East Coast artist Jamie Wyeth.
6-9pm Drawing in the Galleries If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at sketching, EVERY WEEK the MFA is providing you with the tools, the space, a subject and even an instructor to give it a shot! Live (clothed) models or a museum object will be provided as your subject. This is open to amateurs and pros alike. Seriously, you’ve got nothing to lose here!
6:15pm GALLERY TOUR: Highlights of the Museum Collections Head to the Sharf Visitor Center and take an hourlong walkthrough of the MFA’s favorites works.
\ Wednesday, 7/30 //
6-7pm GALLERY TALK: The Creative Process in Modern Japanese Printmaking @Sharf Visitor Center Allow Museum of Fine Art‘s assistant curator Sarah Thompson to walk and talk you through what happened when Japanese printmakers no longer had to create work for commercial publishing but got to explore the medium with only the limitations of their minds. Thompson’s knowledge is impressive and her legit enthusiasm is infectious. The exhibit ends 8/17, so be swift.
6,-7pm GALLERY TALK: Genius of Rickenbacker: Early Electric Instruments @Musical Instruments Gallery (103) Berklee faculty members Mimi Rabson and Norman Zocher explain the history, design and even demo a 1936 electric violin, a 1950 BD-model lap-steel guitar and a 1940 “Frying Pan” lap steel guitar. Cool.
6-9pm Drawing in the Galleries If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at sketching, EVERY WEEK the MFA is providing you with the tools, the space, a subject and even an instructor to give it a shot! Live (clothed) models or a museum object will be provided as your subject. This is open to amateurs and pros alike. Seriously, you’ve got nothing to lose here!
6:15pm GALLERY TOUR: Highlights of the Museum Collections Head to the Sharf Visitor Center and take an hourlong walkthrough of the MFA’s favorites works.
