Daily Life in Ancient Greece at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Abstract

699 At the end of 2017, the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston opened a new permanent exhibit entitled “Daily Life in Ancient Greece.”1 As the museum’s website press release indicates, the installation consists of more than 250 objects, one-third of which have not been on display before.2 The exhibit in Gallery 212A–B shares a room with the earlier installation of ancient coins in Gallery 212C (fig. 1) and is a pendant to the other thematic exhibits of the permanent collection housed in Gallery 215A–C, which focus on themes of Homer and the Epics, Dionysos and the Symposium, and Theater and Performance. The themes of the new exhibit complement these earlier installations, and the new areas have a similar design, using cases with gray tones and beige labels. This and the subdued lighting work to unite the Greek installations visually on either side of the much lighter room of Roman art (Galleries 213 and 214) that lies between them, at the head of the stairs from the first floor. The old installation followed a more traditional organizational scheme, concentrating on period, medium, attribution, and object type. With the new permanent exhibit, most of the Greek art on display at the MFA is now thematically organized and is more densely populated. As the museum’s website explains, many objects were conserved beforehand in a publicly viewable lab, giving the public a chance to see a wide range of media being treated.3 This certainly brought well-deserved attention to more utilitarian or modest objects like tools, terracottas, and plainware pottery. The gallery must have presented a design challenge, as one entrance to the room leads from the Roman gallery into the coin gallery on the east end of Gallery 212, and the two other doors, at the west end, provide a transit path that connects the Roman gallery to a hallway with Roman sculpture (fig. 2). The change in light, palette, and case design from 213 to 212 does signal that you have left Rome, but the subtlety and restrained design do not immediately draw the visitor’s attention to the exhibit nor boldly announce its theme. However, if one does turn to engage with the exhibit, the restrained design focuses attention on a wealth of objects whose scale and variety can and do attract the interest of viewers. Observation of the flow of visitors through the gallery on a crowded open-admission Saturday showed the layout and