Museum Studies Blog at Tufts University

Start 2025 off right with a visit to a local museum! This post is a thorough, though not exhaustive, list of newly opened and soon-to-open exhibits within the Boston area – happy exploring!

Now On View:

Tufts University Art Gallery – Medford, MA
The Tufts University Art Gallery is always free!

Impossible Music
This exhibition goes beyond the typical visual-focused art museum experience to feature works of performance, music, and more. Impossible Music explores the social, cultural, and innovative power of music and sound. Visit the Tufts University Art Gallery to enjoy this newly opened exhibition and support the Tufts staff and students, including our own blog editors, who made this show possible! 

Museum of Fine Arts – Boston, MA
The MFA is always free for Tufts students!

Landscape and Labor – Dutch Works on Paper in Van Gogh’s Time
If you’re a fan of Van Gogh, you should not miss this exhibition! Landscape and Labor contextualizes Van Gogh’s work within the bigger picture of his Dutch contemporaries and features two of his early works.

Curated by Teens: Death as a Constant Companion
I am a sucker for community-curated exhibitions, especially ones that empower children and teens as sense-makers of art. Greater Boston high schoolers were involved in the exhibition process from start to finish culminating in a show that explores the nature and depiction of death in European and American art.

Fragments of Self – SMFA at Tufts Juried Student Exhibition
Support your Tufts community and witness the next generation of artists in this multimedia exhibition from current students and recent graduates of the SFMA. I particularly love the bold colors and textures in their work.

Tha Sun Will Set – Contemporary Abstraction and the Body
An exhibition of all-female modern and contemporary artists from the mid-20th century to today, Tha Sun Will Set explores the feminine through bodies, landscapes, and shapes.

Old State House – Boston, MA

An Unfulfilled Promise – Desegregation and Busing in Boston
Most exhibitions about Boston’s past center on the colonial and revolutionary war periods, but there are other histories that need to be explored. This exhibition explores the lasting local and national impacts of the Morgan v. Hennigan court case on desegregation and schools.

Peabody Essex Museum – Salem, MA

Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks
The Peabody Essex Museum is one of my favorite spots in Salem – I highly recommend it! This encyclopedic exhibit of Flemish artists from the 15th to 17th centuries includes a period-accurate recreation of a cabinet of curiosities.

Upcoming Exhibitions:

Tufts University Art Gallery at SMFA – Boston, MA
The Tufts University Art Gallery is always free!

an archive and/or a repertoire
A collaborative multimedia experience featuring music, dance, photography, video, graphic art, printed works, and more from the archives of the Boston-based Mobius Artists Group. This exhibition opens on Wednesday, January 29th with a free reception and performance from 6-8pm.

MassArt Art Museum (MAAM) – Boston, MA
The MAAM is always free!

Future Fossils
Featuring artists from the Americas and Europe, Future Fossils is a meta exploration of our current moment from the perspective of imagined potential futures, with our everyday objects as the artifacts of tomorrow. This exhibition opens on Thursday, January 23rd with a free reception and discussion with the curators from 5:30-6:15 pm.

MIT List Visual Arts Center – Cambridge, MA
The List Visual Arts Center is always free!

List Projects 31: Kite
Kite is a an Oglála Lakȟóta artist, composer, and scholar focusing on exploring Indigenous culture and philosophy through performance, visual art, and artificial intelligence. In this interactive exhibition, the artist explores dreams and human-nonhuman relationships through Lakȟóta visual language. List Projects 31: Kite opens on Thursday, January 30th.

Harvard Art Museum – Cambridge, MA
The Harvard Art Museum is always free!

The Art of Looking: 150 Years of Art History at Harvard

The Art of Looking is a meta exhibition about the academic study of art history in the United States as spearheaded by Harvard. How does the history of art history education influence how we look at art today? This exhibition opens on Saturday, January 25th.

Joana Choumali: Languages of West African Marketplaces

Joana Choumail combines textile and photographic art to explore how colonialism, international economies, and consumerism intertwine in the marketplaces of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. This exhibition opens on Saturday, January 25th.

Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) – Boston, MA
The ICA is free every Thursday night!

Portraits from the ICA Collection
This photography and fine arts exhibition showcases portraits from diverse artists, inviting us to reflect on the relationships between artist and sitter, community, and self. Portraits from the ICA Collection opens on Saturday, January 25th.

Sara Cwynar
Using photography, search engine terms, and collage, artist Sara Cwynar comments on internet culture and consumerism through artworks that evoke modern advertisements. This exhibition opens on Thursday, February 13th.

McMullen Museum of Art – Boston, MA

Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World
This encyclopedic exhibition explores over a millennium of Islamic thought and culture through illuminated manuscripts, maps, paintings, decorative arts, and even scientific equipment. Learn how Islamic scholars have shaped the fields of astronomy, architecture, medicine, math, and more from the 9th century to now. This exhibition opens on Sunday, February 9th.

In addition to these exhibitions, it’s not too late to visit many of the museum exhibitions from our fall blog post – check them out before they close!