Museum of Fine Arts

Museum of Fine Arts, cultural centre in Boston whose balanced collection has made it one of the world’s most comprehensive art museums. The museum was founded in 1870 with the art holdings of the Boston Athenaeum library as the nucleus of its collection. By the 21st century the collection had grown to some 500,000 objects. Highlights include a major collection of Asian art dating from 4000 bce to modern times, the largest collection outside France of paintings by Claude Monet, the world’s foremost collection of 19th-century American art, and one of the world’s finest collections of Egyptian Old Kingdom objects.

The museum moved to its present location on the Fenway in 1909. A new west wing designed by I.M. Pei was opened in 1981. Later expansions included the Art of the Americas Wing (2010), designed by Norman Foster, which made room for four levels of American art from ancient to modern. The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was established in 1876 and became part of Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences in 2016.