With Éclat: The Boston Athenæum and the Origin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

5. After 1876: Changing Directions

[ chapter five ] After 1876: Changing Directions In july 1876 the Museum of Fine Arts finally proclaimed its physical presence with its richly polychrome building in the Back Bay. By late November the trustees no longer felt it necessary to place regular advertisements in the city’s newspapers , satisfied that the public had duly “become familiar with the Museum.”¹ In 1877, the first full year of operation, almost 160,000 people visited the MFA. On weekdays, an average of 60 visitors quietly strolled in the galleries, but on Saturdays, when the 25¢ admission fee was waived, the crowd swelled to almost 3,000.² Once in its own building, the MFA naturally attracted more gifts and loans from those eager to have their possessions on display at one of Boston’s newest cultural landmarks. These objects were not all artistic masterpieces; in fact, they varied considerably in media and quality. Nevertheless, within a few short years, the trustees’ initial difficulty in filling the galleries turned into the exact opposite. In early 1878 President Brimmer lamented that “the crying want of the Museum is want of space.”³ That spring, the museum’s first expansion began, to complete the northern façade eastward along St. James Avenue, and the enlarged institution opened in July 1879. In the new building, almost the entire first floor was devoted to plaster casts and the Cypriot and Egyptian antiquities, while most of the second floor featured paintings, engravings, and decorative arts (fig. 74).The increased floor space also meant that the museum was now able to mount changing temporary exhibitions, which, consisting almost entirely of loans, were a relatively inexpensive way to generate interest. The first three special exhibitions took place in 1879: the Gray engravings with additional loans (chiefly from Charles Eliot Norton and Charles Perkins); a display of contemporary American paintings, held jointly with the Boston Art Club; and a memorial installation of William Morris Hunt’s work, to mark his death earlier in the year.The following year, five special exhibitions were held.⁴ Yet even though the building was bigger, it was hardly large enough to accommodate all of the functions envisioned in 1870, lacking, for example, a lecture hall. Soon, the galleries were again full of gifts, [ 137 ] loans, and the growing number of plaster casts. By 1883 the trustees had decided on yet another expansion, which took place in 1888–1889 (fig. 75).⁵ Even though funds for the two expansions were raised relatively quickly, the rest of the museum’s income remained meager.⁶ The disproportionately large numbers of nonpaying visitors on weekends did nothing to enrich the coffers, and significant gifts and bequests of money were slow to arrive. Despite the trustees’ public pleas for more funds, the museum’s deficit remained high—several thousand dollars each year—into the 1890s.This insolvency affected all of the museum’s operations to some extent, but chapter five [ 138 ] fig. 74 Floor plans of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, after the first expansion of 1878–1879. From Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Fourteenth Catalogue of the Collection. . . . (Boston, 1879), n.p. After 1876: Changing Direions [ 139 ] fig. 75 Floor plans of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, after the second expansion of 1888–1889. From Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin 1 (March 1903): n.p. the lean finances put a particular damper on acquisitions. In 1880, for example, Martin Brimmer deplored the institution’s “ill-deserved reputation of being a wealthy corporation , able to use the frequent opportunities which are offered to make valuable purchases for its collections.”⁷ At an auction in London in 1881, Charles Perkins “sighed and wished for more of money to spend for our Museum.”⁸ Many of Boston’s available donors had given to the two expansions, and the curator, Charles G. Loring, ruefully remarked, in 1888, that “Boston has been pretty well drained.”⁹ The museum’s poverty in the face of its continuing physical expansion—an awkward phase of the growth process—prompted, for one thing, a reassessment of its founding vision, especially its commitment to industrial art education. When, in October 1876, the board furnished Loring with $2,000 to spend on purchases at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, the selections were, still, “to be made with reference to the advancement of artistic design in the industries of Massachusetts.”¹⁰ Toward the end of the 1870s, however, as...