The Exterior Environment

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Present day map: aerial view of MFA (courtesy of Google Maps)

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Digital photograph of the T tracks along Huntington Ave. outside of the MFA.

An audio recording of the fountain at the back entrance of the MFA.

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Digital photograph of the Fenway entrance of the MFA, Boston.

Looking at an aerial map of the MFA, one can clearly see that it is sandwiched between both cityscape and landscape. The front entrance of the museum faces the tracks of the T, the city’s main form of public transportation, which runs along the center of Huntington Avenue. The back side of the museum faces (what, in the summer and fall is) a green haven of ponds and willow trees—the Back Bay Fens and the park surrounding it.

The more urban side, the Huntington Ave. side, is where most tourists will enter. That side of the museum is tall and grand. It’s beautiful. It lies along what is referred to as “Museum Avenue” and features Cyrus Dallin’s 1909 bronze sculpture, Appeal to the Great Spirit.

On the northern side of the museum, two large baby head sculptures (Day and Night, Antonio López Garcia) frame the entrance, and face Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace. Sonically, one experiences the bubbling gurgle of the fountains outside, as well as the expanding and contracting sound of the cars rushing by—the Doppler effect in full. The museum right at its opening on the Fenway entrance is a peaceful, quietly teeming place, reminiscent of the city in its whole on a Saturday morning: most people are asleep, but there is life and a presence of others. It’s a sense of belonging that is implicit in the city of Boston.