Between Past and Present: Twombly at Boston’s MFA

Abstract

Between Past and Present: Twombly at Boston’s MFA Brandon Jones (bio) Roughly twenty years ago during my time as a high school teacher in Boston’s southern suburbs, I spent many summer days wandering around the Museum of Fine Arts—to different galleries, but never without a visit to those showcasing masterpieces of classical antiquity. I always commenced the procession through a dark, narrow hallway, detouring on a rightward loop through the Egyptian funerary collection, and then rejoining the narrow passage to another dark room with Greek vases, where I would check on red-figured Aktaion and on bilingual Achilles and Ajax playing board games before I angled into an almost hidden corner room with an Etruscan couple in tufa calmly laying at rest in a cool, quiet setting. I still recall vividly the change in temperature, humidity, even the scent of the air as I opened each door to each successive gallery. Some years later, the company for which my father worked was commissioned by the MFA to install new doors within most of its galleries. With some acknowledged irony, my brother and I have since made holiday visits to the MFA during which we admire the glass doors, especially those that open smoothly almost as if a motor were propelling us into a world of ancient art; we also playfully grimace at those that slow our passage with a squeak or hinder our view with a fingerprinted film. Of course, my father’s art was different from that of the sculptors, painters, weavers, and many others who are responsible for so much of what gives the MFA its true raison d’être. Yet, this unusual connection to the museum helps me appreciate the many ways that modern hands bear on our way of experiencing ancient art. They construct the doors which help preserve and provide access to the ancient past. Sometimes the passage or view through those doors is clear; sometimes it takes an extra umph or squint. [End Page 91] While most of the doors my father built remain throughout the MFA, my previous route through the Behrakis Wing yields a very different display of the museum’s antiquities collections after renovations completed in 2009 and 2021, both of which brought an emphasis on explicit connections between the present and the ancient past. Themed galleries from the 2009 renovation included didactics on such timeless topics as daily life, drama, and drinking parties. The most recent renovation expanded the didactic mission, especially in the new Early Greek Art Gallery which includes themed sections on the body, burial, local identities, storytelling, and trade. In the same gallery, video of the seaside cliffs at modern-day Behramkale, Turkey projects against a wall, opposite reliefs of Herakles chasing centaurs and sphinxes facing one another from the architrave of the ancient Temple of Athena at Assos, or modern Behramkale. Throughout the Behrakis Wing, interactive video monitors focusing on pigment in sculpture and vase painting techniques, along with a looping video of student testimonials on antiquity’s allure, aim to connect present and future visitors to the ancient past. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1a. Untitled (Odalisca), August 1988 (1 of 6) Collection Cy Twombly Foundation. © Cy Twombly Foundation. Photograph by Mimmo Capone. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1b. Untitled (Toilet of Venere), August 1988 (3 of 6) Collection Cy Twombly Foundation. © Cy Twombly Foundation. Photograph by Mimmo Capone. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Just beyond the Early Greek Art Gallery’s architrave from Behramkale, the Lubin Family Gallery now serves as a space for a rotating display of modern artistic interactions with the ancient world—the boldest instantiation of the MFA’s mission to show past and present [End Page 92] together. The gallery currently features three sculptures by Cy Twombly surrounded by Sally Mann’s photographs of Twombly’s studio in Lexington, Virginia. It serves as a teaser to the massive, temporary exhibition, Making Past Present: Cy Twombly, which has crossed the country from the J. Paul Getty Museum and will reside in the Linde Family Wing galleries at the MFA through May 7, 2023. Click...