`FROM ACCIDENTAL TO INTENTIONAL COLLECTING: THE JUDAICA JOURNEY OF THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS BOSTON`

In the past decade, the approach of American art museums towards Jewish material culture has undergone a critical transformation. As Jewish museums have faced the mounting necessity to translate their foundational specificity into a universal mission- mostly through temporary exhibitions with broad appeal- major American encyclopedic museums have demonstrated a growing interest in Jewish objects. With the notable exception of the pioneering North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, this is a relatively recent phenomenon, and is exemplified, to varying extent, by several large institutions: from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Minneapolis Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, to emerging “players” such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and the Getty in Los Angeles.

The Judaica trajectory at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, in particular, provides an enlightening example of the awakening of encyclopedic museums to Jewish art and heritage. Thanks, in great part, to the generosity of two visionary women, Jetskalina H. Phillips and Lynn Schusterman, the MFA is now one of the protagonists of this transformation. As well as appointing the first full time Judaica curator in a U.S encyclopedic museum, the MFA has been intensively collecting and displaying a wide range of Jewish material, as shown by the acquisition of over thirty objects in three years, and the current presence of Judaica in thirteen different galleries.

After a brief introduction to the wider phenomenon, this presentation will reconstruct the history of the MFA’s relationship with Jewish material culture - by highlighting landmark moments, individual objects and visionary donors, while also discussing the museum’s methodology for the display of its Jewish collection.