Holding to Our Values at 250

by Rachel Nicholson

In June, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston will debut eight new galleries of 18th-century American Art. The opening coincides with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and offers an opportunity to rethink the stories we’re currently telling. These galleries were last installed in 2012, almost 15 years ago and needless to say, our collection and the attitude towards American Art and history has changed.

The team began this project in 2023 (before I started at the MFA) and over the course of the last two years, our goals have become clear:

• To tell a hemispheric story that highlights the interdependence between North, South, and Central America in a moment of global exchange;
• to give agency to makers, artists, and stories that have been historically marginalized and ignored;
• and to involve many voices in this process to ensure we are building in feedback along the way and representing narratives not currently present in our galleries.

These goals are lofty and also butt up against real challenges. This is a permanent collection reinstallation, meaning we must think about the long-term when planning. This affects both the stories we tell (we want to respond to the moment without this feeling dated in three months) and the objects we display. Many of the objects that tell previously ignored histories from the 18th century are light-sensitive (textiles and works on paper) and so it is impossible to build an installation around them if we cannot have them on view for longer than 6-12 months.

While we have not solved all of the challenges or answered all of the questions, our process reveals how we’re attempting to think in new ways both about our galleries and also how we work as an institution.

Internal Process and Collaboration

From the start, Interpretation has been involved in the process. We, myself and my colleague Jordan Cromwell, meet almost weekly with our curatorial team, working through a Big Idea for the whole reinstallation and also Gallery Headlines for each gallery. We developed Gallery Headlines because a standard, singular Big Idea felt too unwieldy for this project. Each headline is effectively a key message around which the gallery takes shape. Early on, we decided to take a thematic approach to this reinstall. Since there are many paths through the galleries and we cannot take visitors on a single journey, we are using this to our advantage, instead leaning into case studies that our collection can highlight. 

In the fall of 2025, we led an almost 2-hour workshop with our curatorial colleagues in which we talked about each gallery’s headline and how they relate to one another. After months of developing each gallery to its strongest, tightest message, this workshop allowed us to talk about them as a whole and see where messages were connecting and, perhaps more importantly, which stories/ideas we were leaving out. From there, we were able to map an entire interpretive outline for the reinstallation. The workshop was a culmination of a year and a half of working closely together. We’ve also sat with Curatorial and Design colleagues as they’ve laid out the objects in each room, advocating where necessary for space for text and other modes of visitor engagement and (gently) pointing out when there may not be enough room for all of the ideas we’re trying to communicate.

Next, curators created Gallery Text Plans, outlining the ideas of each intro intext, section panel, and object label. Taken together, these documents give us a holistic view of the stories we’re telling and help us to see if we’re achieving our goals and visitor outcomes. They also helped us gauge just how much text is in the galleries before curators started drafting labels, taking into account the very real museum fatigue that visitors can experience in our galleries. All of this planning has made the label writing process (which we’re currently in) much easier. 

Flexibility and Relationship-Building

In addition to internal collaboration, we’ve worked with many folks outside of the museum. Some have been scholars through symposia and study days for specific galleries, others have been one-off groups we’ve met with to get their feedback including a Museum Studies class from Smith College (if you really want feedback, ask a group of 18-20 year-olds) and a group of professors from University of Massachusetts Boston who pushed us on how the galleries align with curriculum standards.

We’ve also engaged a community advisory group through our Table of Voices program. This group is composed of 9 Boston-area folks who bring different expertise and knowledge to our conversations. We began meeting with them in May 2025 and have worked with them over an extended period of time as we talk through specific galleries, overarching themes, and potential programming opportunities. In one session (each of which is 3 hours long), the group delivered very strong feedback about a gallery titled “History and Myth-Making”, which aims to show how artists aided in the creation of “founding myths” in the United States. One wall was devoted to images of George Washington. This elicited strong reactions with one member eloquently stating “in showing many images are you puncturing the myth or simply reinforcing it?” 

For us, this was a lightbulb moment. After the somewhat tense session, we regrouped as an internal team and reworked the room, moving objects around so that artworks by contemporary Indigenous makers are in direct conversation (sometimes confrontation) with 18th-century white artists, and brainstorming interpretive tools beyond wall labels that will “decode” the myths on display. This is just one example of how the team’s flexibility and openness has made this project better. It’s not always easy to receive critique, but we’re aiming to not only listen but act upon the feedback we receive.

Working with this group over an extended period of time has also allowed us to build relationships and create a space for mutual learning. Individuals have developed a strong rapport and, most importantly, we’ve been able to build trust. This was especially clear in February when we gathered with the group just a week after the MFA went through a reduction in force that affected almost every area of the museum, including the Art of the Americas curatorial team and our Community Engagement department. As staff, we expected skepticism, criticism, and feared strong reactions. And while we certainly received some of this, we were also grateful that every member of the group showed up ready to ask questions, share their disappointment, but also reaffirm their commitment to this project and their support. It was a poignant moment that showed the value of long-term engagement and why relationship building must be central to our museum work.

What Now?

We face a moment when the progress towards telling a more full story of American history is under attack. In my opinion, the best we can do is hold to our values and goals and create a space where people understand the power of art (and museums) to show a rich and nuanced view of history.

When the galleries open, we look forward to conducting visitor evaluation and talking to our many collaborators to understand if we’ve met our goals. While reinstall projects like this only come around once every 15-20 years, we hope to find ways to continually improve and respond to feedback and changing perceptions of and orientations to this collection. After all, it’s much easier to change a label than it is to rehang an entire gallery.