About the Museum
The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College organizes and presents innovative, multidisciplinary exhibitions that receive national and international recognition, attracting audiences from the Boston area and beyond. Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times has written that the McMullen is in the vanguard of museums creating exhibitions that "reach far beyond traditional art history," providing political, historical, and cultural context for works on view. In the coming years, the McMullen Museum plans to enhance its tradition of playing a major role in the cultural and intellectual life of the University, as well as the international community of scholars and art enthusiasts.
Education
The McMullen Museum's core mission is to cultivate learning, celebrate artistic excellence, explore the visual traditions of diverse cultures, and inspire faculty and student research based on the visual arts. The McMullen offers exhibition-related programs, including musical and theatrical performances, films, gallery talks, symposia, lectures, readings, and receptions that draw students, faculty, alumni, and friends together for stimulating dialogue. Students and faculty at the University have access to the McMullen's extensive permanent collection, which dates back to the nineteenth century and continues to grow through gifts and acquistions. Recent additions to the collection include works by Amedeo Modigliani, Frank Stella, Françoise Gilot, and John LaFarge.
Exhibitions
A center for both academic research and distinctive exhibitions, the McMullen brings together work of art from international collections. Saints and Sinners (1999), featuring Caravaggio's The Taking of the Christ, attracted the largest audience for any university museum exhibition up to that time. Edvard Munch: Psyche, Symbol, and Expression (2001) was the largest American exhibition of Munch's work since 1978. A retrospective of the work of Surrealist Roberto Matta (2004), organized by faculty from the romance languages, art history, and theology departments, was dubbed "splendid" by the Boston Globe. Drawing from the talented faculty at Boston College as well as from institutions around the world, the McMullen Museum engages scholars from a variety of disciplines to offer varying perspectives, as curators of exhibitions and contributors to catalogues, wall text, and educational programming.
