Publications
Browse a selection of recent exhibition catalogues and books from MFA Publications. To find more titles, visit MFA Publications.
A Guide to the Collections
This newly updated edition of the definitive guide to the MFA’s enduring masterpieces provides an enticing introduction to a collection that circles the globe and spans thousands of years.
Art of Asia
Hokusai's Landscapes: The Complete Series
Sarah E. Thompson
Ingenious and appealing landscape prints by the best known of all Japanese artists, on subjects ranging from waterfalls, islands, bodies of water, and bridges, to scenes inspired by classical poetry.
Tattoos in Japanese Prints
Sarah E. Thompson
The fascinating story of how 19th-century woodblock prints inspired tattoo artists with lush, colorful images and still offer vivid inspiration today.
Kuniyoshi X Kunisada
Sarah E. Thompson
Utagawa Kuniyoshi and Utagawa Kunisada, the two best-selling designers of prints of the “floating world” in 19th-century Japan, meet in this gallery of kabuki actors, beautiful women, warriors, monsters, and more.
Ink, Silk, and Gold: Islamic Art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Laura Weinstein
The dynamic and complex traditions of Islamic art are explored through manuscripts inscribed with gold, paintings on silk, elaborate metalwork, intricately woven textiles, luster-painted ceramics, and more.
Hokusai
Sarah E. Thompson
Captivating paintings, prints, and drawings from the peerless Hokusai collection at the MFA introduce the work of a witty, wide-ranging, and inimitably inventive artist.
MFA Highlights: Arts of China
Hiromi Kinoshita
Dazzling works from the MFA’s Chinese art collection, one of the finest outside East Asia, are arranged to explore cultural and aesthetic traditions throughout China’s long history.
Art of Europe
Monet: Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Katie Hanson
An enticing introduction to all thirty-five oil paintings by Monet in the MFA’s permanent collection, representing nearly the full span of the celebrated Impressionist artist’s long career.
Della Robbia: Sculpting with Color in Renaissance Florence
Marietta Cambareri and others
This beautifully illustrated book brings readers into the Della Robbia workshops, illuminating the ingenuity and technical skill of the creators of glazed terracotta sculpture, one of the great inventions of the Renaissance.
MFA Highlights: European Painting and Sculpture after 1800
Emily A. Beeny and Marietta Cambareri
The MFA’s world-famous collection includes masterpieces by artists such as Renoir, Gauguin, Degas, Turner, and Monet. The works presented here testify to the richness and complexity of European art in the modern era.
Contemporary Art
Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation
Liz Munsell, Greg Tate, and others
In the early 1980s, art and writing labeled as graffiti transitioned from New York City walls and subway trains into art galleries, bringing the energy, inventiveness, and resistance of hip-hop and the multimedia post-graffiti movement.
Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics
A Collaboration with Nobuo Tsuji, edited by Anne Nishimura Morse
Takashi Murakami’s irreverent, pop-infused work is informed by deep scholarship and engagement with traditional Japanese art. Some of Murakami’s best-known paintings and sculptures are presented alongside Japanese masterpieces selected by a leading art historian.
MFA Highlights: Contemporary Art
Edward Saywell, Al Miner, Liz Munsell and Emily Zilber
Introducing the art of our times through examples from the MFA’s collections, this volume presents artistic concepts that offer a path toward understanding the subjects, forms, styles, purposes, and techniques of contemporary art.
Art of the Americas
Common Wealth: Art by African Americans in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Lowery Stokes Sims and others
The story of African Americans in the visual arts, told through works by leading figures from the nineteenth century to the present alongside others who deserve to be better known.
John Singer Sargent Watercolors
Erica E. Hirshler and Teresa A. Carbone and others
This publication introduces readers to the full sweep of Sargent’s accomplishments in watercolor, in works that delight the eye as well as challenge our understanding of this prodigiously gifted artist.
Sargent’s Daughters: The Biography of a Painting
Erica E. Hirshler
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, depicting four young sisters, stands as one of Sargent’s greatest paintings. This examination of its creation, along with its changing meanings, illuminates a much beloved painting and reaffirms its mystery.
Louis Comfort Tiffany: Parakeet Windows
Nonie Gadsden
A fascinating brief narrative of the fabrication, imagery, and life of a Tiffany masterpiece in stained glass offers an intimate look into the maker’s legacy, as well as the nineteenth-century revival of the medium.
MFA Highlights: American Painting
Elliott B. Davis and others
Featuring masterworks by artists as diverse as Copley, Sargent, Whistler, Cassatt, Hopper, and Pollock, this volume offers a tour of important American paintings from the Colonial period to the mid-1960s.
Photography
Graciela Iturbide’s Mexico: Photographs
Kristen Gresh
The intensely personal, lyrical photographs in this book show that, for Iturbide, photography is a way of life—as well as a way of seeing and understanding Mexico, with all its beauties, rituals, challenges, and contradictions.
Viewpoints: Photographs from the Howard Greenberg Collection
Kristen Gresh and Anne E. Havinga
In the 20th century, photography evolved as an art form while serving as an eyewitness to social, cultural, and political change. This book presents significant images by masters of the medium that came to define their times.
Edward Weston: The Early Years
Karen E. Haas with Margaret Wessling
This book tells the story of the aesthetic development of a renowned Modernist photographer, illustrated with beautifully reproduced rare prints of early stylistic experiments that helped form Weston’s mature artistic identity.
Karsh: A Biography in Images
Commentary by Jerry Fielder
Yousuf Karsh traveled the globe in the 20th century to photograph subjects ranging from historical figures to anonymous farmers to steelworks. This volume presents well-known portraits along with images from across the photographer’s long and distinguished career.
MFA Highlights: Photography
With works from early experimenters to modern giants of photography, the MFA’s remarkable collection is displayed in portraits and figure studies, city scenes and still lifes, landscapes and seascapes.
Prints and Drawings
Toulouse-Lautrec and the Stars of Paris
Helen Burnham and others
Iconic prints along with rarely seen sketches shine a spotlight on the stars of the Paris stage, the birth of celebrity culture, and the brilliance of the artist who gave them enduring life.
The Propaganda Front: Postcards from the Era of World Wars
Anna Jozefacka and others
In the first half of the 20th century, millions of propaganda images circulated on postcards. Those reproduced here advocate for political causes and celebrate war efforts on all sides of the major conflicts of their time.
Holland on Paper in the Age of Art Nouveau
Clifford S. Ackley
This beautifully illustrated book celebrates the Dutch contribution to Art Nouveau through a tour of more than 100 posters, decorative calendars, and illustrated books, as well as prints and drawings.
Art of the Ancient World
Unearthing Ancient Nubia: Photographs from the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition
Lawrence M. Berman
These images document a pioneering archaeological expedition, bringing to life the dramatic landscapes of the Nile Valley, the excitement of discovery, and the artistry of the photographers who recorded it all.
MFA Highlights: Classical Art
Christine Kondoleon and others
Ancient Greek, Roman, and Etruscan civilizations come to life through masterpieces on themes of myth and religion, heroes and warriors, love and loss, illuminating the cultures that produced them.
MFA Highlights: Arts of Ancient Nubia
Denise M. Doxey
The MFA has the most extensive and important collection of ancient Nubian art outside of Khartoum, featuring refined early ceramics, monumental statues, exquisite gold jewelry, and luxury goods from around the Mediterranean world.
Textile and Fashion Arts
Arts and Crafts Jewelry in Boston: Frank Gardner Hale and His Circle
Nonie Gadsden, Meghan Melvin, Emily Stoehrer
The ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement inspired a vibrant community of jewelry makers at the turn of the century in Boston to create exquisitely designed and handcrafted works of wearable art.
MFA Highlights: Textile and Fashion Arts
Pamela A. Parmal and others
Richly decorated, finely crafted, and extraordinarily varied, the textiles highlighted in this volume demonstrate the artistry and innovation that elevate these functional objects to works of art.
Arts of Africa
Postcards from Africa: Photographers of the Colonial Era
Christraud M. Geary
Images of Africa made during the global postcard craze around 1900 contribute to understanding political, social, and cultural changes on the continent and help reconstruct the lives and work of the photographers who created them.
MFA Highlights: Arts of Africa
Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch
The African art collection at the MFA offers a portal into a large and complex continent with a wealth of history and culture and introduces traditions within the wider field of African art.