Museum of Fine Arts

Founded in 1870, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is internationally recognised for the scope and quality of its collections. It stages an increasingly dynamic programme of exhibitions, lectures, films and educational events and is visited by more than one million people every year. However, in common with many such institutions that have grown incrementally over the years, the sheer scale of this audience places a great strain on the Museum’s facilities. This masterplan presents a clear strategic framework within which the Museum’s current accommodation will eventually be doubled to provide new galleries, a study centre, and temporary exhibition and education spaces. In the process, the visitor experience will be transformed.

Architecturally, the project echoes themes explored in the Reichstag and the Great Court at the British Museum, establishing a creative dialogue between the old and the new, and strengthening links with the local community by making the building more open and accessible. At the core of the scheme is the restoration of the symmetry and logic of the Museum’s original Beaux-Arts plan, devised in 1907 by the American architect Guy Lowell. Following Lowell’s intentions, the central axis of the main building on Huntington Avenue is reasserted with the reintroduction of the main entrance to the south and the reopening of the north entrance, which is currently closed to visitors. At the heart of this axis is a new information centre, from where all visitors will begin their tour of the galleries. A glazed structure – ‘a crystal spine’ – provides new accommodation and partly encloses the two grand courtyards at the centre of the Museum in a glass ‘jewel box’, creating valuable new space for visitor orientation, cafés, sculpture and special events.

The new buildings will be highly energy efficient; the courtyards will be naturally lit and the galleries and study centre will have state-of-the-art climate control, the gallery spaces configured to allow art to be displayed with a more obvious sense of clarity and light. Surrounding the Museum, extensive new landscaping is designed to strengthen links with the adjacent Back Bay Fens, originally laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted, architect of New York’s Central Park. The landscape design follows the Olmsted tradition of winding paths and informal planting to draw the greenery of the Fens into the building, thus helping to erode visual and physical distinctions between inside and outside.

Client: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Consultants: Weidlinger Associates, Davis Langdon, Shooshanian Engineering Inc., Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd, George Sexton Associates, Acentech Inc, Buro Happold , Epsilon Associates, George B H Macomber, Goulston & Storrs, Hayley and Aldrich, Howard / Stein-Hudson, Hughes Associates, MFA Boston

Client: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Consultants: Weidlinger Associates, Davis Langdon, Shooshanian Engineering Inc., Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd, George Sexton Associates, Acentech Inc, Buro Happold , Epsilon Associates, George B H Macomber, Goulston & Storrs, Hayley and Aldrich, Howard / Stein-Hudson, Hughes Associates, MFA Boston