“Fine Art” isn’t necessarily a word that comes to the top of one’s mind when they think of the city of Boston. Known for being an instrumental part of the nation’s founding, as well as being a hub for education and sports, the core tenants and identity of the city may not seem to point towards the arts. The powers in charge of Boston in the 1800s recognized this early on, and foresaw education in the arts as crucial for the evolution and growth of the city.

As Boston began to geographically expand after its landfilling was completed in the mid to late 19th century, the city decided to go through somewhat of a rebranding. This led to a focus on educating its citizens about the history and art that made up not only Boston, but the whole world. What better way to do this, than to embark on turning Boston into a bustling hub of the fine arts with the creation of a museum!

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, the city of Boston had very few options for exposing its residents to the arts. Having a personal taste for the fine arts was expensive, let alone hosting a large collection for public view, so Bostonians’ options were limited. The Boston Athenaeum, founded in 1807 by William Smith Shaw and the Anthology Society as one of the country’s oldest independent libraries, first sought to address this problem.

After moving locations a plethora of times and eventually settling into a mansion on Pearl Street, the Athenaeum added an art gallery alongside its massive literary collection in 1827, and began putting on yearly exhibitions of both European and American art. By the time its location on Beacon Hill opened in 1849, where the Athenaeum still resides, a full painting gallery was opened on the third floor where Boston residents could bear witness to masterpieces by great Flemish masters like Peter Paul Rubens or iconic American portraits by Gilbert Stuart.

Around the late 1860s, the demand for more publicly accessible art grew too large to be contained to a singular floor of the Athenaeum, and the great minds behind the city of Boston began to look for a more permanent solution. After about five years of construction, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) opened its doors in Copley Square in 1876.

One of the leading intellectuals behind the creation and founding of the Museum of Fine Arts, Charles C. Perkins, was the brother of Edward N. Perkins, the head of the Fine Arts committee at the Boston Athenaeum. This allowed for considerable collaboration between the two entities and set the MFA up for success despite its limited financials. Around this time, the Athenaeum also decided to fully commit to its library reputation by abandoning most of its artistic acquisitions, and decided to donate 56 of its paintings to the newly established Museum of Fine Arts. This donation, coupled with other gifts from Harvard and MIT, allowed the MFA to find its footing in the early years and persist despite the copious criticism it received.

Around the same time, institutions for art education were also gaining a foothold in the city. While Boston had grown to appreciate and understand the necessity of fine arts, the next step was learning how to create fine artwork from within the local community. MassArt, formerly known as the “Normal Art School” opened its doors near Faneuil Hall in 1873. The school’s primary goal was to educate members of the Boston public on the fine arts and develop the next generation of fine American artists.

The SMFA, The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, was yet another educational art institution that opened its doors in the 1870s. In 1876, it opened within the MFA’s Copley Square location as a technical institute occupied with teaching painting and drawing to its students. A little over a decade after its opening, The Normal Art School moved to Copley Square, and for a moment the MFA, SMFA, and what would later become MassArt all sat within about 2 blocks of one another.

Copley Square was such a hotspot for fine art at this time that renowned Boston artist, John Singer Sargent, was brought into conversations with Boston Public Library officials to create multiple murals to adorn the ceiling of the building above its “Special Libraries.” The project began in 1890, but was such an ambitious undertaking that the final murals were not installed until 1919. The Sargent ultimately passed away in 1925 before the full completion of all the intended masterworks, thus leaving the central panel of the gallery’s East wall empty. The addition of these murals to the Public Library yielded yet another easily accessible space for the public to appreciate the fine arts, and cemented Copley Square as the artistic hub of the city for much of the 19th century.

Copley Square wasn’t the only part of the city that had artistic prestige and Boston’s entry into the 20th century marked a turning point for where the heart of the city’s art district lay. In 1899, construction of an unusual building with an abundance of glass and brick commenced in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, which would later give rise to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum when it opened its doors in 1903.

The amount of fine European artwork in the United States, let alone in Boston, was extremely limited at this time, and American museums would often be ridiculed for not being able to showcase fine pieces from Europe. Gardner sought to change that. Gardner and her husband were known philanthropists and art collectors, and had a shared dream of being able to present their impressive art collection to the public for all to take joy in and learn from. After the sheer amount of artwork they’d collected outgrew their home, Garner used a large inheritance from her father to build the museum to her liking, as well as to collect extremely rare pieces from European masters such as Titian, Vermeer, and Degas.

Only a few years after the Garder’s opening, the MFA closed its doors in Copley Square and moved to the Fenway area as well after its collection grew too large to be housed by its first building in Copley Square. Construction finished on their brand new building in 1909, and the museum opened its doors to the public in its permanent home at 465 Huntington Ave.

Soon after the new building was constructed, John Singer Sargent was tapped yet again to create murals and frescoes to fill the MFA’s new space. He created these frescoes beginning in 1916 up to his passing in 1925. Eventually, MassArt and the SMFA would join the Gardner and MFA in the Fenway area with a separate building for the SMFA completed in 1927. MassArt originally moving to the Fens in 1929, only to settle even closer to the Garner and others in 1983.

The “new” Museum of Fine Arts sits on about an acre and a half of land and, after many additions over the years, now takes up a whopping 107,000 square feet. Its collection boasts over 450,000 works of art, making it the 20th largest art museum in the whole world. The Gardner continues to occupy its original location and has a collection of over 7,500 paintings for visitors to view alongside its stunning Italian architecture.

All of the great fine art superpowers of Copley Square eventually migrated to the Fens around the turn of the 20th century, and paved the way for the Fenway area to not only be known for its athletics, but also its incredible art institutions. Today, the Museum of Fine Arts still stands high and proud over the Fens neighborhood, and is one of the major staples of Fenway and the city of Boston as a whole.

Sam Walker is an undergraduate at Northeastern University majoring in History, Culture, and Law and was the co-op Visitor Services & Exhibition Assistant at the Leventhal Center from July to December 2024.