Museum of Fine Arts
One of America's great encyclopedic museums, anchored by a world-class Egyptian collection.
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston is one of the largest and most comprehensive art museums in the United States, holding a permanent collection of nearly 500,000 works spanning more than 5,000 years of human creativity. Founded in 1870 and occupying its current Beaux-Arts building on Huntington Avenue since 1909, the MFA is a genuine institution — the kind of museum that rewards repeat visitors because you simply cannot absorb it in a single trip. It sits in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood, just steps from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, making the surrounding blocks one of the most culturally dense stretches in New England.
Inside, you'll find one of the finest collections of ancient Egyptian artifacts outside of Cairo, including mummies, sarcophagi, and objects excavated during decades of joint digs with Harvard. The Impressionist holdings are exceptional — the MFA holds more Monets than almost any institution outside France — and the American wing covers everything from colonial portraiture to John Singer Sargent with real authority. The Art of the Americas wing, opened in 2010 in a Foster + Partners–designed expansion, is a gorgeous space to spend an afternoon. Beyond the permanent galleries, rotating special exhibitions are consistently ambitious and well-curated.
Thursday and Friday evenings the museum stays open until 10pm, which is one of Boston's best-kept cultural secrets — the crowds thin dramatically after 5pm and the galleries feel almost private. Wednesday through Sunday general admission applies, but members and Boston residents on certain programs can enter free. The museum café and its rooftop terrace (seasonal) are decent enough for a midday break, and the gift shop is unusually good for art books.