Art and Beauty at the MFA

A visit to the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston is always inspiring. Encircled by local colleges, cozy small restaurants and the stunning Back Bay Fens, a natural parkland designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the exterior setting is almost as beautiful as the museum itself!

The front entrance to MFA on Huntington Avenue is spectacular. As you cross the front lawn to the entrance, linger for a moment to reflect upon sculptor Cyrus Dallin’s masterpiece, Appeal to the Great Spirit, unveiled in 1912. Described by the museum  as “a Native American man astride a horse with his arms outstretched, Appeal to the Great Spirit has become an icon of the MFA and one of the most reproduced objects in the collection.”

For cultural tourists interested in Irish and Irish-American art and sculpture, the MFA has an impressive collection of artifacts worth seeing, though not all of them are available to the public. But you could easily spend a day just browsing some of the Irish items that are on display.

For example, MFA has one of the world’s most important collections of American painter John Singleton Copley. His parents were Irish immigrants who landed in Boston just before John was born in 1738. To align with the America 250 celebrations in 2026, MFA plans a major reinstallation of its 18th-century Art of the Americas galleries, which will open on June 19, 2026, and include Copley’s famous paintings of Paul Revere, John Hancock, Sam Adams, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Warren and others.

MFA has several paintings by Jack Yeats, brother of W.B. Yeats, and one of Ireland’s premier artists of the 20th century. William Michael Harnett emigrated from Clonakilty, Cork to Philadelphia as an infant in 1848. Several of Harnett’s masterful still-life paintings are on display.

Moving on to sculpture, MFA has the works of Irish- born sculptors Augustus Saint Gaudens (b. Dublin, 1848) and Martin Milmore (b. Sligo, 1844) as well as noted Irish- American sculptors Margaret Foley and Thomas Crawford.

One piece to see is an exquisite marble medallion of Edith Rotch, made in 1862 by Irish immigrant Martin Milmore when he was 18 years old.

A fascinating Irish item in MFA’s Europe Collection is the Emly Shrine, which MFA Assistant Curator Courtney Leigh Harris calls, “a rare and unusual example of a reliquary.” It often held sacred relics of  a saint and was favored by Irish pilgrims. It is “quite tiny and was probably hung from the neck or shoulder of its owner as a source of protection and spiritual strength,” writes MFA.

This is just a small sampling of Irish art and artifacts at the MFA. Stay tuned for more stories from irishboston.org on the museum’s wonderful collections.

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