", a large
cláirseach made in 1734, is part of the collection of musical instruments 's
Appeal to the Great Spirit (1908) stands outside the museum's main entrance facing Huntington Avenue. The Museum of Fine Arts possesses materials from a wide variety of art movements and cultures. The museum also maintains a large online database with information on over 346,000 items from its collection, accompanied with digitized images. Online search is freely available through the Internet. The museum also maintains the Conservation and Art Materials Encyclopedia Online, (CAMEO) a
database that "compiles, defines, and disseminates technical information on the distinct collection of terms, materials, and techniques used in the fields of art conservation and historic preservation". CAMEO uses
MediaWiki.
Highlights Some highlights of the collection include: •
Ancient Egyptian
artifacts including sculptures,
sarcophagi, and jewelry dating back to approximately 6500 BCE to 600 CE, which were primarily obtained through excavations conducted by
George A. Reisner in Egypt and Sudan between 1905 and 1942. • The
Nubian arts, including
Kerma pottery, colossal royal statues of
Napatan kings, jewels, and imports from Greece and Rome, are represented in the collection of Nubian art. The gift includes works from 76 artists, as well as the
Haverkamp-Begemann Library, a collection of more than 20,000 books, donated by the van Otterloos. The donors also established in 2022 a scholarly institute at the museum, the Center for Netherlandish Art, which houses the library and many of the paintings. •
French Impressionist and
Post-Impressionist works by artists such as
Paul Gauguin,
Édouard Manet,
Pierre-Auguste Renoir,
Edgar Degas,
Claude Monet,
Camille Pissarro,
Vincent van Gogh, and
Paul Cézanne • 18th- and 19th-century American art, including many works by
John Singleton Copley,
Winslow Homer,
John Singer Sargent, and
Gilbert Stuart •
Cyrus Dallin's 1908 statue,
Appeal to the Great Spirit, is prominently exhibited on the lawn at the museum's entrance. • The Chinese collections feature a selection of imperial
ceramics, ancient bronzes, monumental
Buddhist sculptures, and 20th-century and contemporary artwork, spanning nearly every era of Chinese history. The collection of Chinese paintings is particularly noteworthy, with numerous masterpieces from the
Song and
Yuan dynasties. • The largest collection of Japanese artworks under one roof in the world outside Japan • The Rockefeller collection of Native American work • The Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art includes works by
Kathy Butterly,
Mona Hatoum,
Jenny Holzer,
Karen LaMonte,
Ken Price,
Martin Puryear,
Doris Salcedo, and
Andy Warhol. • A collection of over 1,100 historical music instruments, with selected items displayed in a dedicated music room, with occasional talks, live demonstrations, and concerts.
Japanese art '' by
Hokusai, –1832 The collection of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts is the largest in the world outside of Japan. that include 4,000 Japanese paintings, 5,000 ceramic pieces, and over 30,000
ukiyo-e prints. The base of this collection was assembled in the late 19th century through the efforts of four men,
Ernest Fenollosa,
Kakuzo Okakura,
William Sturgis Bigelow, and
Edward Sylvester Morse, each of whom had spent time in Japan and admired Japanese art. Their combined donations account for up to 75 percent of the current collection. Another part of this collection is a number of
Buddhist statues. In the later
Meiji era of Japan, around the turn of the 20th century, government policy deemphasizing
Buddhism in favor of
Shintoism and financial pressures on temples resulted in a number of Buddhist statues being sold to private collectors. Some of these statutes came into the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts. Today, these statues are the subject of preservation and restoration efforts, which have been at times viewable by the public in special exhibits. In recent years, the museum has also collected a number of works by contemporary Japanese artists. In 2011, they acquired
Zetsu no. 8 (絶), the largest work in ceramicist
Jun Nishida's
Zetsu (絶) series. Also important for this collection is the exhibition of its items in Japan. From 1999 to 2018, regular exchange of items was conducted between the Museum of Fine Arts and its sister museum, the now-closed
Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In 2012, the traveling exhibition
Japanese Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston visited the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka, and was well received. In 2023 the museum held an exhibition entitled "Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence" celebrating the origins, works, and cultural impact of Japanese artist
Hokusai.
Chinese art The Chinese art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts is one of the finest outside East Asia, with particularly strong holdings in paintings, ceramics, and Buddhist sculpture. The collection includes objects from nearly every era of Chinese history, from Neolithic tomb artifacts to contemporary works. The museum's Chinese paintings collection is internationally renowned. Highlights include the
Thirteen Emperors scroll from the Tang dynasty (618–907), considered the oldest court painting in existence, as well as
Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk (early 12th century, attributed to Emperor Huizong) and
Nine Dragons (first half of the 13th century,
Chen Rong). The ceramics collection features important imperial stonewares and porcelain, including a rare
Ru ware dish from the Northern Song dynasty, one of fewer than one hundred such pieces still extant in the world. In 2018, the museum received the largest and most significant gift of Chinese paintings and calligraphy in its history: the Wan-go H. C. Weng Collection. Encompassing 130 paintings, 31 works of calligraphy, 18 ink rubbings, and 4 textiles, the gift spans 13 centuries and five imperial dynasties, with particularly rich representation of art from the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) eras. The core of this collection was assembled in the 19th century by
Weng Tonghe (1830–1904), a preeminent scholar who served as tutor to two of the last emperors of the Qing dynasty.
Restitution claims In April 2024, the museum donated several 14th-century Buddhist
Śarīra relics that were in its collection since 1939 to the
Jogye Order as part of an agreement to repatriate artifacts taken from
Korea during the
Japanese Occupation. The relics will be transferred to the Heoam Temple in
Yangju, South Korea, where they are believed to have originated. In November 2025, the museum returned two of its
Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. ==Libraries==