a lesson in the feminine arts by Aiden H. '28
aka mfa boston and a rant on enjoying art
Last year when deciding which colleges I wanted to apply to, I had one priority over all else: living on a coast. I’m sorry all states from Utah to Virginia, but there was no way I could go four years without at least an ocean to walk to and ponder my melodramatic nature over.
And while MIT fit the criteria of being a) on a coast and b) VERY close to a body of water01 I write this while looking at the Charles River , the only things I knew about Boston before moving here were about the Celtics, the Boston Tea Party, and the accent. Growing up, I just had no preconceptions of what Boston was like how L.A. and New York have such distinguished vibes.
This is a tragedy. Having been here for only 38 days, I can confidently rank Boston higher on my list than other cities I’ve been to and have been eager to get off campus and actually go explore the city I live in. One of my first ~outings~ was when I took a blue bike02 A bicycle sharing/rental system that has bikes all around Boston for about $3/ride. down to Northeastern’s campus alone one Sunday to explore the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MFA Boston). I found a museum-themed Spotify playlist and began to walk around alone to the soft pattering of classical music, and loved it!
So in an effort to encourage you to go around Boston (or just outside generally), here are my highlights from my trip and all the things it made me feel.
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DALI: DISRUPTION AND EVOLUTION
Apparatus and Hand – Salvador Dali (1927)
The museum has a huge Dali exhibit right now until December 1, and even though I only got a photo of one painting, this was intentional to spark your curiosity about what could be. Just like with Dali and surrealism in general, I feel like the off-putting nature and seemingly no answers kinda pulls you in?
To combat this lack-of-answers in Dali’s content (at least, at first glances), the exhibit does a really good job of pacing the paintings and providing descriptions of how his life and the surrealist movement are shown in the works, helping to piece together whatever it means.
The exhibit ends with a quote that I felt like accurately represented the whole experience: “My audience mustn’t know whether I am spoofing or being serious; and likewise I mustn’t know either. Where does the deep and philosophically valid Dali being, and where does the bizarre and preposterous Dali end?” This kinda duality of man has been a constant throughout art history, but I feel like recently it has resurged into our young minds (albeit, in a slightly meme-ier way). Am I cottage core or dark academia? Should I cosplay as Brat or an Ultraviolence-era Lana Del Rey sad girl today? Am I secretly a gym bro? If I am a gym bro, when am I an academic gym bro compared to the stereotypical dumb guy? Can I write a blog post about serious art while making a stupid meta joke about the art itself? More importantly, how can my inherent stupidness and seriousness coexist in a way that doesn’t diminish the other?
MONET
Monet is my favorite painter of all time (I would decorate my entire house with just him if it wasn’t tacky), so it was unsurprising that I went into the Monet room for too long and just stared. My favorite part is that it is just…pretty? It’s not didactic, it’s not “intellectual”, there’s nothing to do except appreciate it for how good it looks.
I haven’t seen these editions of the Rouen Cathedrals before03 Monet painted the same Rouen Cathedral over thirty times in different lightings, trying to perfect how light works on the cathedral every time , so it was cool to check more off my list.
Nothing crazy, just my pretty favs.
ART OF ANCIENT EGYPT, NUBIA, AND THE NEAR EAST
This is the only photo I got and the tag wasn’t in frame, so I’m sorry to say it and I hope I don’t sound ridiculous, but I don’t not know this man, I am sorry to this man, etc.
This section of the museum has a lot of mummies/graves/caskets/tombs scattered throughout. I don’t include any photos here to a) encourage you further to go see them, and b) because I find it weird to take photos of a piece that is meant to represent the life and legacy of an actual living person. Walking through this part of the museum gave me the same overwhelming feeling of walking through a cemetery. It’s easy to walk past each piece and notice how wow! they look exactly like we were taught in elementary school!, but it can be both extremely emotional and important to walk through and understand the weight of the art around you and how it is meant to represent the lives of entire people we’ll never get to know through anything except these (essentially) decorative rocks.
10/10
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Over the years, my friends and I have developed a running joke about the importance of the “feminine arts”. With the meteoric rise of Pride and Prejudice (2005), Bridgerton, cottage core, and everything of the like into Gen-Z’s minds, we’ve romanticized what was the almost-definitely-awful lifestyle of the 1800s British. Why worry about Instagram or your finances when you could speak French and have tea outside in white linen clothes?04 No, I can neither speak French or own linen clothes
My Sunday at MFABoston definitely fulfilled the museum-aesthetic that I have been vying for. But while these leisures of “high society” can be fun to gawk over with others, everything mildly fancy feels like a competition. I simultaneously must prove my taste is high-class while disproving yours. We commodify art as a means to prove our worth to others, when really we are just organs with opinions who didn’t make the art in the first place. With such a vast extent of art and culture to be “known” at the museum, even writing this blog post is a daunting exercise in how to talk about and describe art in a way that is purposeful but not esoteric.
This is why I think being in the museum environment, or really anywhere in public alone, can be a really vital experience. And, shockingly, being alone in a museum isn’t difficult! (gasp!) I feel like there’s not much to say past “I like this one” or “what is that?” or “aiden stop trying to touch stuff or we’re gonna get kicked out”. Whether it stems from this internal idea that museums are elegant and you must be an intellectual to enjoy true art or just the societal pressure to make small talk in quiet rooms, the conversation is distracting from the actual purpose you could extract from walking around alone. Turns out, art is a lot harder-hitting when you’re forced to just sit there and think about it.
So go sit there alone and think about it.
- back to text ↑
- A bicycle sharing/rental system that has bikes all around Boston for about $3/ride. back to text ↑
- Monet painted the same Rouen Cathedral over thirty times in different lightings, trying to perfect how light works on the cathedral every time back to text ↑
- No, I can neither speak French or own linen clothes back to text ↑