Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Tickets, Highlights & Visitor Guide to the MFA

⏱ 2.5-4 hours👤 All ages$$

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston opened in 1870 and grew into one of the most encyclopedic art museums in the country, with a collection of hundreds of thousands of works spanning the ancient world to the present. It anchors the Fenway cultural district, alongside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in a grand building expanded over the decades, including a soaring modern American Wing.

Several collections stand out. The Egyptian and Nubian holdings, built largely through the museum's own early-20th-century excavations, are among the finest outside Cairo. The Art of Asia galleries are one of the most important such collections in the Western world. The Art of the Americas wing traces American art from pre-Columbian work through Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Winslow Homer, and John Singer Sargent. And the European galleries hold a beloved group of French Impressionist paintings — the MFA's Monet collection is one of the largest outside France.

As with any museum this size, the move is to pick two or three areas you care about rather than attempting the whole thing. The MFA also mounts major special exhibitions (often ticketed separately), has well-regarded dining, and stays open late on select evenings, which are quieter. It's a short ride from downtown via the Green Line, in the same neighborhood as Fenway Park and the Gardner Museum.