The Department of Contemporary art is responsible for the achievement, display, and interpretation of art made after 1955, international in origin and without restriction to media. It includes over 600 objects and emphasizes painting, but also includes considerable examples of sculpture, photography, and new media such as video projections. Unlike the other prestigious collections of art of the past which have earned the MFA an international status, the collection of contemporary art is far from encyclopedic in its demonstration of critical artistic movements of the late twentieth century through the present, although it has never been more essential since its founding.
While work by living artists has always been composed by the MFA—Winslow Homer and Claude Monet were contemporary artists when some of their paintings were acquired—the Department was officially established upon the Museum's centennial in 1971. Modern and post-1945 art was originally pursued with a decided stress on color-field painters such as Jack Bush, Helen Frankenthaler, Jules Olitski, and Larry Poons.
A study collection of over thirty complete and incomplete canvases by Morris Louis was also created. Attention abroad in the 1980s encouraged additions by artists loosely categorized as European Neo-Expressionists, such as Georg Baselitz, Francesco Clemente, Anselm Kiefer, and Sigmar Polke, among others.
While work by living artists has always been composed by the MFA—Winslow Homer and Claude Monet were contemporary artists when some of their paintings were acquired—the Department was officially established upon the Museum's centennial in 1971. Modern and post-1945 art was originally pursued with a decided stress on color-field painters such as Jack Bush, Helen Frankenthaler, Jules Olitski, and Larry Poons.
A study collection of over thirty complete and incomplete canvases by Morris Louis was also created. Attention abroad in the 1980s encouraged additions by artists loosely categorized as European Neo-Expressionists, such as Georg Baselitz, Francesco Clemente, Anselm Kiefer, and Sigmar Polke, among others.
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