The MFA and the Gardner: Planning a Boston Museum Day

Boston's two best-known art museums stand a short walk apart near the Fenway, and visiting both in one day is a mistake. They demand completely different kinds of attention.

The Museum of Fine Arts

The MFA is an encyclopaedic museum: a very large institution with collections spanning ancient Egypt, Asia, Europe, the Americas and contemporary work, in a building extended repeatedly over more than a century.

Its Art of the Americas wing and its holdings of American painting are particular strengths. Its Japanese collection is among the most significant outside Japan, a legacy of 19th-century Boston collectors with deep connections to Japan. Its Egyptian holdings came substantially from decades of excavation work.

The practical consequence of an encyclopaedic museum is that you cannot see it in a visit and should not try. Pick two or three areas and accept that you are leaving most of it unseen. Visitors who attempt the whole building leave exhausted having absorbed nothing, which is the most common way a day at the MFA goes wrong.

A reasonable first visit: one ancient collection, one painting gallery, and whatever the current special exhibition is. Then coffee, then leave.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The Gardner is the opposite proposition. It is the collection of one person, installed in a building she designed around it, and by the terms of her will the arrangement of the collection cannot be changed.

The result is a Venetian-style palace built around a covered courtyard garden, with rooms arranged as she left them rather than by period or school. Works hang densely, without conventional labelling, in an arrangement reflecting one collector's judgment rather than a curatorial argument. A Renaissance painting may sit beside a piece of furniture and a letter, because she thought they belonged together.

Some visitors find this maddening and some find it the most alive museum they have been in. Both reactions are reasonable.

The courtyard is the centre of it, planted and changed seasonally, visible from the galleries on every floor.

There is also a modern wing housing contemporary programming and an artist-in-residence programme, which sits in deliberate contrast to the historic building.

The theft

The Gardner is the site of the most famous unsolved art theft in the world. In 1990, thieves dressed as police officers took a number of works, including a Vermeer and a Rembrandt. Nothing has been recovered, and the reward for information has stood for decades.

Because the will forbids rearranging the collection, the empty frames remain hanging where the paintings were. Standing in front of them is a genuinely strange experience and, for many visitors, the thing they remember most about the museum.

The Isabella rule

A long-standing quirk of the museum's admission policy: anyone named Isabella gets in free. It is real, it is charming, and it is worth mentioning if you happen to qualify. There have historically been other free-admission quirks as well, including on your birthday.

How to plan

Do one per day. They reward different modes: the MFA rewards selection and stamina, the Gardner rewards slow attention in a small number of rooms.

Check current hours and closure days for each before going. Both have days they are closed, and this is the most common way a museum trip fails.

Check whether tickets need booking in advance, particularly for the Gardner, whose capacity is limited by the nature of the building.

Ask about reciprocal and free access. Many area universities and libraries provide passes, and residents frequently have access they do not know about through an employer or a library card.

Getting there

Both sit near the Green Line E branch along Huntington Avenue, and both are within walking distance of the Fenway area and of each other.

This is the same corridor serving the Longwood Medical Area, so expect trains to be busy at commuting hours.

If you are combining a museum with a Red Sox game, the ballpark is close by and the neighbourhood transforms entirely on a game day. That is either a bonus or a reason to pick another afternoon, depending on your temperament.

Beyond these two

The area holds more than the famous pair. Nearby institutions include a contemporary art museum on the waterfront a short ride away, university galleries in Cambridge with serious collections, and a number of smaller specialist museums.

If you have a full day and want two institutions, pairing one large museum with one small one works far better than pairing the MFA and the Gardner, which are each enough on their own.

Getting in for less

Both institutions have free or reduced admission routes that a surprising number of residents never use.

Library passes through the Boston Public Library and many suburban library systems cover admission to a range of museums.

University affiliation frequently includes free entry for students and staff, sometimes with a guest.

Employer memberships at large local institutions, including hospitals and universities, often extend to staff.

Reciprocal membership with museums elsewhere may cover you if you already belong to one in another city.

Free hours and community days run at various points; check current arrangements rather than a blog post from three years ago.

For families

The MFA handles children well, with family programming and spaces designed for younger visitors, and the sheer variety of the collection means something will land.

The Gardner is a harder proposition for small children: it is quiet, densely hung, and the works are not behind glass in the way a conventional museum's are. Older children who like a mystery, however, tend to be captivated by the theft and the empty frames.

Practical comfort

Both have cafés, and the Gardner's courtyard-adjacent café is a genuinely pleasant place to sit.

Coat and bag checks matter more here than at some museums, particularly in winter, and large bags are restricted at both.

Photography rules differ between institutions and between permanent and special exhibitions. Check at the desk rather than assuming.

Making a day of it

Pair one museum with the neighbourhood rather than with the other museum. The Fenway, the Emerald Necklace parks, the library at Copley and the shops and restaurants along Huntington and Boylston are all within reach.

A morning at one museum, lunch, and an afternoon walk through the park system is a far better day than two museums and exhaustion.