McMullen Museum of Art

Museum in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

McMullen Museum of Art

McMullen Museum of Art is the university art museum of Boston College in Brighton, Massachusetts, near the main campus in Chestnut Hill.

## History

[edit]

John La Farge, Christ between the Apostles John and Paul (Christ Preaching), McMullen Museum of Art.

The museum, which opened in Devlin Hall in 1993, was officially named The Charles S. and Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art in 1996 in honor of the parents of the Boston College benefactor, trustee, and art collector John J. McMullen.[1]

In September 2016, the museum relocated to 2101 Commonwealth Avenue on Boston College's Brighton Campus.[2][3][4] The new facility features nearly two times the exhibition space of its previous location in Devlin Hall, state-of-the art lighting, movable walls, humidity and climate control, and extensive storage for the museum's growing permanent collection.[5]

Despite being a university art museum residing on a college campus, the McMullen Museum of Art organizes multidisciplinary exhibitions that have received national and international recognition. Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times has written that it is in the vanguard of museums creating exhibitions that "reach far beyond traditional art history", providing political, historical, and cultural context for works on view.[6]

Winslow Homer, Grace Hoops, part of the Lynch Collection at the McMullen Museum of Art.

The Museum holds an extensive permanent collection that spans the history of art from Europe, Asia, Americas, and has significant representation of Gothic and Baroque tapestries, Italian paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries, and American paintings of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Well-known artists represented in the museum include Amedeo Modigliani, Frank Stella, Françoise Gilot, Alexander Ney, and John La Farge.

In 2021, the investor and philanthropist Peter Lynch donated 27 paintings and drawings to the museum, including works by Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, and Pablo Picasso.[7] Lynch also committed $5 million to support the curation of the works, which will become the museum's Carolyn A. and Peter S. Lynch Collection.[7]

Martin Johnson Heade, Orchid and Hummingbirds near a Mountain Lake, part of the Lynch Collection at the McMullen Museum of Art.

## Exhibitions

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The Taking of Christ (1602) from the collections of the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, was a major draw at the McMullen Museum's 1999 exhibition "Saints and Sinners".

The McMullen Museum has hosted more than sixty exhibitions over two decades.[8] They have been curated by both internal teams of scholars from the Boston College and international specialists. Being a university museum, the focus of the exhibitions is the generation of new knowledge in all disciplinary fields of art history.

Recent significant exhibitions include:

* "Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement" (2018)[9]
* "Cao Jun: Hymns to Nature" (2018), curated by the American philosopher John Sallis.[10] It was the first exhibition of Cao Jun's work in the United States.
* "Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections" (2016)
* "Portugal, Jesuits, and Japan: Spiritual Beliefs and Earthly Goods" (2013).[11] The exhibit focused on nearly a century of interaction, beginning in 1543, between the Japanese people and the Portuguese, namely traders and Jesuit missionaries. .[12]
* "Paul Klee: Philosophical Vision; From Nature to Art", with which the McMullen Museum of Art reopen for its fall 2012 season;
* "Pollock Matters" (2007) received much media attention, comprising over 150 paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures, exploring the personal and artistic relationship between famed American Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock and noted Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer Herbert Matter;
* A retrospective of the work of Surrealist Roberto Matta (2004), organized by university faculty from the romance languages, art history, and theology departments, was also well received;
* "Edvard Munch: Psyche, Symbol, and Expression" (2001) was the largest American exhibition of Munch's work since 1978;
* "Saints and Sinners: Caravaggio and the Baroque Image" (1999), featuring as its centerpiece the first North American appearance of the then-recently rediscovered masterpiece by Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ. This exhibition, by any reckoning, has outshone by far all other McMullen exhibitions, previous and subsequent, both in terms of the amount of international media attention and attendance numbers it received. It effectively first put the McMullen Museum "on the map."[13]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "McMullen Museum of Art". www.bc.edu. Retrieved 31 January 2019.
2. ^ "McMullen Museum to Relocate to Boston College Brighton Campus". www.bc.edu. Retrieved 31 January 2019.
3. ^ "Student Submission: A Tale of Two Museums". the Terrace. 14 February 2017. Retrieved 31 January 2019.
4. ^ Germain, Taylor St (17 September 2015). "A New Home For McMullen On Brighton". The Heights. Retrieved 31 January 2019.
5. ^ Blessing, Kiera. "BC to relocate art museum to former archbishop's residence - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved 31 January 2019.
6. ^ "Arts in America: More-Ambitious Art Shows and Catalogs on Campus". The New York Times. 11 December 2002.
7. ^ a b Baer, Justin (6 December 2021). "Investor Peter Lynch Donates $20 Million Art Collection to Boston College". The Wall Street Journal.
8. ^ "McMullen Museum of Art: Exhibitions". www.bc.edu. Retrieved 31 January 2019.
9. ^ McQuaid, Cate (4 October 2018). "At BC, Carrie Mae Weems throws open windows inside history". Boston Globe.
10. ^ "McMullen Museum: Cao Jun: Hymns to Nature". www.bc.edu. Retrieved 31 January 2019.
11. ^ "McMullen Museum of Art: Portugal, Jesuits, and Japan". www.bc.edu. Retrieved 31 January 2019.
12. ^ "Jesuits In Portugal: History And Art". The Heights, the independent student newspaper of Boston College. Archived from the original on 1 March 2013. Retrieved 18 February 2013.
13. ^ The Art Newspaper of London (March 2000 issue) lists it among the 'Most Popular Exhibitions" of 1999 in the world, with an attendance of over 65,000. For reviews of the exhibition see, among the many published, The New York Times (Sunday, Jan. 31, 1999), The Boston Globe (Friday, Jan. 29, 1999), The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., May 13, 1999, The Art Newspaper of London (Jan. 1999 issue), The Chicago Tribune (Feb. 14, 1999), The Christian Science Monitor (March 5, 1999) and The Associated Press (Jan. 31, 1999). The catalog, edited by exhibition principal organizer, Franco Mormando, and featuring works by some thirty other Italian Baroque masters, with a series of scholarly articles by eminent art historians and historians, is available for download at the McMullen Museum's website [1]

## External links

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