The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, begins with a local address and quickly unsettles the idea of a purely local story. A portrait connected to the American Revolution can lead towards a painting made in Mexico, while another route turns to Japanese prints or Chinese ceramics. The point of the journey is not to collect countries. It is to notice how objects, artists and ideas travel, and how Boston became one of their meeting places.
The museum first opened to the public in Copley Square on 4 July 1876. In 2026, that beginning is a century and a half away. Its early home closed in May 1909, and the new building on Huntington Avenue opened that November. Architect Guy Lowell designed a museum that could grow in stages, a practical decision still visible in the institution's layered architecture.