Boston and New England: Monday: Musem of Fine Arts

I spent most of the day at the Museum of Fine Arts. It was great: a world-class museum. (This surprised me; I had assumed the museum would be a mere shadow of the Met, two hours away.) Not only were there good explanations of the paintings, objects, etc., the museum was quite large, covering a huge expanse. I only made it through 60% of the museum in the three and a half hours I was there before it closed.

This day, I saw the museum's sections devoted to

• Japanese paintings (which I liked, and I usually do not like them).
• Japanese prints of sumo wrestlers. Feeling less technically sophisticated, I found them less appealing that the paintings in the first exhibit, which actually happened to be older.
• Japanese kimonos.
• Korean and Japanese pottery.
• Southeast Asian art.
• Indian sculptures. Some were not unlike what I saw in India. Yet, the density of high quality objects in the room dwarfed similar sights in India.
• Islamic manuscripts and pottery.
• Egyptian pieces.
• Greek pieces, including an impressive collection of coins.
• Etruscan pieces.
• American art, mainly pieces from New England, especially focused on portraits of America's founding fathers.
• musical instruments, including some I'd never heard of, let alone heard, before.
• jewelry, including some eclectic and novel designs, certainly unlike the pieces one would find a jewelry store.
• a modern art exhibit that included Japanese art and German photography.
• a special exhibit, Shy Boy, She Devil, and Isis, which is difficult to describe. This exhibit had three pieces I liked:
  • Judy Kensley McKie's funky glass table, Chase Table, held up by two dogs biting each other's tail. (picture)
  • John McQueen's life-sized statue of a man made from willow sticks, Mire, joined together with plastic clasps ("bundle ties"). (flickr picture)
  • Tomas Hlavicka's Claire, a glass canoe with metal embedded. (flickr picture)

I also saw a fraction of the museum's collection of European artwork. In one room, my first reaction was "holy crap, that's a lot of Monets." Then I noticed a wall of van Goghs next to them. I came across Cezanne, Gauguin, Degas, and Renoir. And then I spotted even more Monets! The sight made me laugh out loud.

These pictures document in detail many of the interesting, beautiful, or creative pieces of art I saw. They also document what I ate for lunch and dinner, and neat things that happened while heading to the museum.

The day was a cold 38 degrees. I'm glad I spent most of it indoors. And I'm glad I brought my down jacket on this trip.