The McMullen Museum of Art unveiled three new exhibitions for the Boston College and greater Boston communities. From medieval Italian paintings to film photos from Brazil, the museum threads the theme of change between each exhibition.
Whether the change be artisanal technique or shifts in culture, each piece comes with a rich background and touching perspectives, aiming to engage the minds of BC students through art and conversation.
In the Daley Family Gallery on the second floor, visitors are greeted by the exhibition Medieval | Renaissance: A Dialogue on Early Italian Paintings. Nineteen works from the Frascione Collection bridge the gap between the late 13th and early 16th centuries, illuminating the prevalence of devotion and artistic authorship in Italy.
This period of paradigmatic shifts in art delved into new workshop practices, stylistic choices, and societal appreciation.
Each of the large panels scattered throughout the exhibit describes the historical context of the time periods. The Middle Ages were a period of centralized power for the Christian Church, evidenced by works like a late 13th-century Croce dipinta, which is a painted crucifix. Although the tempera paint has faded on the metal, with proper illumination, the panel is spiritually moving.
Historically, these crucifixes would be fixed on a choir screen to captivate those inside the church. As it hangs on the wall, it invokes a chilling feeling through its depiction of the graphic state of Christ’s suffering—a nod to the rise in Christian devotion in the 13th century.
The dim lighting that surrounds it allows the viewer to focus solely on the craftsmanship and sense of suffering coming from the panel.
At the start of the Renaissance period, domestic art rose in Italian society. Displaying paintings of the Virgin Mary and Jesus within one’s home became the norm, as shown by the three paintings of “Madonna and Child” displayed in the exhibit.
Tucked away behind Medieval | Renaissance stands the next exhibition, A Fresh Vision: Landscape Painting in Belgium after Romanticism; The School of Tervuren in an International Context. Thirty-six paintings of 19th-century Belgian landscapes hang on the walls.
The paintings from Tervuren could be split into two distinct categories: those that exhibit hope and those that do not. These artists lived on the brink of Romanticism and Realism, which is visible in the works of artists like Hippolyte Boulenger, who painted nature’s beauty.
His usage of warm-colored oil on canvas, such as with “Retour à la ferme (Back on the Farm),” exemplified this. Other Tervueren artists, however, had different perspectives, choosing to depict the strenuous labor of agriculture.
Toward the end, the paintings had all converged into one holistic picture in my mind. They all depicted simplistic, rural lifestyles, evidence that they were painting their lived experiences.
What caught my eye were the handful of sketches included alongside the paintings. It allowed the viewer to enter into the mind of the artist and see what details within the scenery caught their attention.
Venturing up to the third floor, you find the last exhibit—Martin Karplus: Moments and Monuments. It houses a collection of digitally printed 35mm film photographs from the late Karplus during his travels in Europe and the Americas after 1950. Gifted to the McMullen Museum in 2024 prior to his passing, Karplus and his wife, Marci, spent many years in the Boston area.
Karplus’ natural eye for photography is evident in the way the vibrant colors of the photographs attract your attention. “Schönbrunn Palace with Toddler” captures a lone toddler and their red stroller juxtaposed with the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, beautifully accentuating the depressive sentiments echoed in post-war Europe and the sense of hopefulness for future generations.
What I admired the most was Karplus’ care when deciding what to photograph. His focal points were the everyday people he encountered in his travels, ranging from women in traditional clothes to working men rebuilding their country.
Appreciation would be the defining theme echoed across Karplus’ photographs. In “Navajo/Diné Men Sitting in Doorway,” men in the photo smoked the same cigarettes as those in “Crowd in Lobby, Guggenheim Museum, New York City,” a purposeful acknowledgment that shows how connected we are to those we think we aren’t.
The exhibit prompted a question without explicitly saying it: Is our purpose in exploration simply to learn or to bring us together?
