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Publications

Browse a selection of recent exhibition catalogues and books from MFA Publications. To find more titles, visit MFA Publications.

MFA Guide to the Collections book cover

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.

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Art of Asia

Hokusai's Landscapes book cover

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.

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Tattoos in Japanese Prints book cover

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.

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Kuniyoshi x Kunisada book cover

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.

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Ink, Silk and Gold book cover

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.

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Hokusai book cover

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.

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MFA Highlights: Arts of China book cover

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.

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Art of Europe

Monet paintings book cover

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.

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Della Robbia book cover

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.

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MFA Highlights Art of Europe book cover

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.

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Contemporary Art

Basquiat Writing the Future exhibition catalogue cover

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.

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Murakami exhibition catalogue cover

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.

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MFA Highlights Contemporary Art book cover

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.

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Art of the Americas

CommonWealth book cover

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.

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John Singer Sargent Watercolor exhibition catalogue

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.

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Sargent's Daughters book cover

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.

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Tiffany Parakeet window spotlight book cover

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.

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MFA Highlights American Painting book cover

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.

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Photography

Graciela Iturbide book cover

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.

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Viewpoints Howard Greenberg photographs book cover

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.

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Edward Weston photographs book cover

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.

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Karsh Biography in Images book cover

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.

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MFA Highlights photography book cover

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.

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Prints and Drawings

Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition catalogue

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.

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Propaganda Front: Postcards from era of World Wars book cover

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.

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Holland on Paper art nouveau book cover

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.

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Art of the Ancient World

Unearthing Ancient Nubia photographs book cover

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.

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MFA Highlights Classical art book cover

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.

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MFA Highlights Ancient Nubia book cover

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.

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Textile and Fashion Arts

Arts and Crafts Jewelry in Boston book cover

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.

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MFA Highlights Textile and Fashion Arts book cover

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.

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Arts of Africa

Postcards from Africa photographs book cover

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.

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MFA Highlights Arts of Africa book cover

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.

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