Information from a source that helps us test a claim.
source
A document, object, image, or account we can examine.
inference
An explanation based on clues; it still needs checking.
migration
Moving from one place to another to live.
immigrant
A person who moves to another country to live.
estimate
An approximate amount, based on available information.
oral history
A recorded interview about someone’s memories and experiences.
community
People connected by a place, relationships, or shared activities.
ancestry
Family origins across generations.
primary source
Evidence created by someone who experienced a time or event.
Try an artist’s choice
Change the horizon. Change the picture.
Artists choose how much space to give the sky and the land. Move the horizon in this practice sketch. How does your choice change where your eyes go?
Your practice sketch · not a historical artwork
Now look at The Fog Warning below. How much room did Winslow Homer give the sea and sky?
Look closely · ask questions
Art has a Massachusetts story.
A work can belong here because a museum cares for it, an artist made it here, or its maker has a Massachusetts connection. Those are different stories.
Start with your eyes: name three details before reading a label. Then ask: “What do I see that makes me say that?” Paintings, quilts, sculpture, and book art all belong in our investigation.
“In the collection” does not always mean “on view.” Objects may be stored, lent, or rotated. Open the museum record for current information.
Art from near and far
Masterpieces in Massachusetts
Oil painting
Paul Revere
John Singleton Copley · 1768
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Massachusetts connection: A portrait of a Boston silversmith by a Boston-born painter, in a Boston museum.
Copley shows Revere with a silver teapot and tools. The portrait helps us meet a skilled maker, beyond the famous story of his ride.
Look & wonder
Why might an artist include someone’s tools in a portrait?
Paul Revere · Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, via Wikimedia Commons Image source ↗
Oil painting
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit
John Singer Sargent · 1882
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Massachusetts connection: The MFA cares for this painting of the daughters of an American family living in Paris.
Four children stand or sit at different distances in a large room. Light, shadows, and enormous vases make this family portrait unusual. It was painted in Paris, not Boston.
Look & wonder
Which person did you notice first? What directed your eyes there?
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit · Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, via Wikimedia Commons Image source ↗
Oil painting
The Fog Warning
Winslow Homer · 1885
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Massachusetts connection: Homer was born in Boston; this painting belongs to the MFA.
A fisherman in a small boat looks toward a distant vessel as fog approaches. The sea is a workplace, and the picture invites us to consider skill, weather, and risk.
Look & wonder
What details suggest a decision the fisherman needs to make?
The Fog Warning · Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, via Wikimedia Commons Image source ↗
Oil painting
El Jaleo
John Singer Sargent · 1882
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Massachusetts connection: An internationally known painting cared for by a Massachusetts museum.
A dancer, musicians, light, and shadow suggest the energy of a Spanish performance. This is a painting’s interpretation of movement and music, rather than a recording.
El Jaleo · Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Commons file sourced from Bridgeman Art Library Image source ↗
Cotton quilt
Pictorial quilt
Harriet Powers · 1895–1898
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Massachusetts connection: Made by a Georgia artist; now in the MFA collection.
Powers, a Black quiltmaker born into slavery, used fabric shapes to tell stories. Fifteen panels include people, animals, and signs of the natural world. Quilts can be works of art and carriers of knowledge.
Look & wonder
How could several small pictures work together to tell a larger story?
Pictorial quilt · Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Google Art Project, via Wikimedia Commons Image source ↗
Oil painting
Water Lilies
Claude Monet · 1905
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Massachusetts connection: This French painting is part of the MFA collection; it was not made in Massachusetts.
Monet painted his garden pond many times. Floating leaves, flowers, and reflections make it possible to look at the water’s surface and the reflected sky at once.
Look & wonder
Where do you see the water’s surface, and where do you see reflections?
Water Lilies · Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, via Wikimedia Commons Image source ↗
Japanese woodblock print
Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave)
Katsushika Hokusai · about 1830–1831
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Massachusetts connection: The MFA owns impressions of this famous Japanese print.
A towering wave curls above boats, with Mount Fuji in the distance. This work is a print: artists and skilled makers used carved woodblocks to make impressions on paper.
Look & wonder
How do the sizes of the wave, boats, and mountain affect the scene?
Under the Wave off Kanagawa, shown at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. · Jesse Costa / WBUR Image source ↗
Oil painting on wood
Self-Portrait, Age 23
Rembrandt van Rijn · 1629
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Massachusetts connection: A Dutch artist’s self-portrait in a Massachusetts collection.
The painter made himself the subject. Light, shadow, clothing, and expression help shape the way a viewer meets him. A self-portrait involves choices about how to be seen.
Look & wonder
What would you choose to show in your own self-portrait?
Self-Portrait, Age 23, 1629. · Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain Image source ↗
Oil painting; magazine illustration
Freedom from Want
Norman Rockwell · 1943
Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge
Massachusetts connection: The original is in a Massachusetts museum; Rockwell later lived and worked in Stockbridge.
A family gathers around a meal in one of Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings. “Want” here means lacking things people need. Ask how an artist can turn a large public idea into an everyday scene.
Look & wonder
How might another family or community picture having what they need?
Massachusetts connection: A Boston scene by an artist born in Dorchester.
People, trees, streets, and evening light share the picture. Compare the city’s daily life with the parks and streets you know. A painting can show both a particular place and an artist’s choices.
Look & wonder
Which details would you compare with a photograph of Boston today?
At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight), 1885–1886. · Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain Image source ↗
Oil painting; magazine illustration
Home for Christmas (Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas)
Norman Rockwell · about 1967
Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge
Massachusetts connection: Rockwell pictured the main street of his Massachusetts town.
The long scene includes buildings on Stockbridge’s Main Street. A familiar local place became an image seen by people far away. Look for choices that make the street feel like a community.
Look & wonder
What would you include in a painting of your town’s main street?
Massachusetts connection: Inspired by the view at Hopper’s studio in Truro, Massachusetts.
Sunlight crosses a quiet room, and a doorway appears to open onto the sea. Hopper changed what he saw through imagination. This Massachusetts-connected work is housed in Connecticut.
Look & wonder
What feels realistic, and what makes you wonder whether the space is possible?
Rooms by the Sea, Edward Hopper, 1951. · Edward Hopper; Yale University Art Gallery, via Yale Environmental Humanities Image source ↗
Bronze sculpture
The Minute Man
Daniel Chester French · 1875
Near the North Bridge, Concord
Massachusetts connection: Made for Concord; cast at the Ames Foundry in Chicopee.
The statue was dedicated a century after the fighting in Concord. It commemorates a citizen-soldier. Its date matters: it shows how people in 1875 remembered an event from 1775.
Look & wonder
How is a memorial different from an object made during the event?
Massachusetts connection: Public art made for Boston, inspired by Robert McCloskey’s book.
Mrs. Mallard and her ducklings step from the page into a city park. The sculpture lets us compare storytelling in two dimensions with storytelling in three.
Look & wonder
What changes when a book character becomes a sculpture you can walk around?
Raven Reshapes Boston: A Native Corn Garden at the MFA
Elizabeth James-Perry · 2021
Created for the MFA’s Garden for Boston exhibition
Massachusetts connection: A Boston installation by an Aquinnah Wampanoag artist.
Corn, plants, and a raven-shaped garden brought Native knowledge into a museum landscape. This was a living, changing installation; use the museum’s photographs and the artist’s explanation to explore the 2021 project.
Look & wonder
How could plants and a garden shape communicate an idea?
Created for the MFA’s Garden for Boston exhibition
Massachusetts connection: A Boston project by a Roxbury artist and children’s-book illustrator.
Holmes used sunflowers to explore community, resilience, and growth. This 2021 installation changed with the season. It reminds us that some works of art are meant to grow and change.
Look & wonder
What could a sunflower symbolize? Support your idea with a detail.
Published book; artist celebrated at Springfield Museums
Massachusetts connection: Created by an author-illustrator born and raised in Springfield.
The Cat’s shape, striped hat, expressions, and actions help tell the story. Study how pictures support a beginning reader. The book is the featured artwork; the museum connects us to its maker’s life.
Look & wonder
What can you understand from one illustration before reading its words?
The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst
Massachusetts connection: A work in the museum co-founded by this longtime Northampton artist.
This is a later image of Carle’s famous caterpillar, rather than a page taken from the 1969 first edition. Look for layered paper, edges, color, and texture. Picture-book art belongs in museums too.
Look & wonder
How could cut paper create a texture that a single crayon line cannot?
Yes—but it is a person’s creation, not a window showing everything exactly as it happened. Compare an artwork with a letter, photograph, or museum record. Ask who made it, for whom, and whose experiences it leaves out.
Try it: compare Copley’s portrait of Paul Revere with Longfellow’s poem. How does each creator shape the way we remember Revere?
Museum of Fine Arts
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum