11 Dec 2020

Monet and Boston: Lasting Impression

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Reviewed by Franklin Einspruch

"Come back," the exhibition "Monet in Boston" seems to say. "We are the MFA of fond memory, where you can enjoy the undiminished daring of Impressionism in peace. Not the MFA of this year's news, connected to multi-million-dollar losses, closures, furloughs, and layoffs, conspicuous penitence over spurious racial allegations, the postponement of an exhibition titled, with increasing irony, 'Phillip Guston Now,' and shows in which we badger you into accepting the airy premises of our coastal progressivism. We'll even hang La Japonaise (1868) without bringing up cultural appropriation. Get a load of those haystacks!"

Ah well. The MFA is blessed with some of the best Monets to be found outside of Paris, and the depth of the holdings enable them to be juxtaposed with influences like the magnificent Johan Barthold Jongkind seascape. Say what you will as qualification, the confluence of discernment and benefaction in the last quarter of the 19th century in Boston is one of the greatest achievements of taste in all of art history. Museum directors come and go. Monet is forever.