Gallery

[rinue]

Upon my first visits, I discovered the room for jewelry-making at Scarlett's new apartment was bigger than the new jewelry gallery at the MFA.

Comments

[movingfinger]

The jewelry display room at the MFA seems designed to be used as a cocktail party space rather than being something the museum had lacked all along and that fills in a desperately-yawning gap in the collections.

[rinue]

It's ridiculous. They're so proud of having a dedicated jewelry gallery, enough so that it made the papers in New York, but the room is small enough it feels crowded with six people inside. And there will never be just six people inside, as anyone could have predicted who has been to the Smithsonian, where the jewelry exhibit at natural history is even more packed than the air and space museum. There are these tiny intricate things you want to look at close up and take your time with, and instead you have to glance over somebody's shoulder and move along quickly.

In general, I have been displeased with the recent additions to the MFA. I'm glad they have more gallery space and that they've started to take seriously the idea that art continued after 1890, but there's no flow and no way to orient - you can never see what's ahead of you, and the paths to and fro make very little sense, especially now that they've moved the main entrance. It's very disorienting. Even the guards can't give me good directions anymore. I can't even find galleries that haven't moved.

They also did that thing all museums seem inclined to do, where they put the contemporary art on the top floor. I think this appeals to people because oh yes the past is buried and the present is right on top, but considering that it's the part of your museum that actively and continually changes and is therefore the part I'll want to check out every time I go, maybe you should put it by the door.