Talk:Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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Architecture Mid‑importance

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Museums Top‑importance

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Smithsonian Institution: Archives of American Art Low‑importance

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United States: Massachusetts / Boston Low‑importance

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Visual arts

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Improvements

I am endeavoring to make significant improvements to this page. I have added an infobox, articles on the branch museum in Nagoya and director Malcolm Rogers, and will proceed to translate the copious information on the German-language version of this article. Cjs2111 06:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Notable Curators

Wonderful that someone has been smart enough to have created this section. These are often the folks who do the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Bravo. MarmadukePercy (talk) 01:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Governance?

Who owns the MFA & collections? Are they municipal? Private, like the Metropolitan? Public/private partnership? I wuold love for someone to clarify this. Albiart (talk) 16:29, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Robbery?

I think we should add a section about this robbery: https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/15/archives/early-portrait-by-rembrandt-stolen-in-armed-robbery-at-boston-fine.html SSR07 (talk) 22:14, 16 October 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SSR07 (talk • contribs) 21:32, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

UNDUE section

The Community relations section reads like a list of a few unencyclopedic community programs interspersed with TripAdvisor-type complaints about poor service. Per WP:UNDUE and WP:NOT, most of this section does not fit the tenor of the topic. Cf. Art Institute of Chicago for an example that reads much better. — AjaxSmack 23:24, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. It desperately needs rewriting SSR07 (talk) 01:54, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I made a go at rewriting it to some extent, mostly reorganizing the information for flow. I'm also open to it being trimmed instead. Grk1011 (talk) 14:42, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Photo placement

Regarding [this diff], could @Randy Kryn: please explain the rationale for keeping the photo in a section where it isn't discussed? The new location is directly alongside prose speaking to it. Elsewhere IMO it just appeared as decoration. I'm not sure why this would be a controversial move to any extent. Grk1011 (talk) 14:48, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, and happy 250th anniversary of the tea party. The statue is, of course, a major piece of the collection, the section the photo has been in for a long time. All images of artworks on Wikipedia can be called 'decoration' but are actually visual desciptors of the topic. In this case, one of the museum's most prominent artworks has a solid place in the 'Collection' section. I don't know if it's mentioned in the text there or above, if so it should be (EDIT: added it, thanks for focusing attention on this, it is one of the museum's prominent pieces). Randy Kryn (talk) 14:53, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't mentioned in the text there before, but I think it still has more relevance in the new location, which directly addresses indigenous-related art and its relation to the museum. The length of time that it was in a certain spot of the article is not particularly relevant. Also, just above here, folks have commented on what a disaster this article is, so it really does need a full rethinking. Photo placement and all. Grk1011 (talk) 15:02, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'd added it (see my edit to the post above). A disaster? Not so much, although the one section they refer to seemed very long and undue. Even if the entire article being a disaster becomes consensus, an image of the museum's most prominent statue would likely appropriately stay in the collection section. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:25, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate that you have a preference for its location. I disagree, but maybe some others will chime in. To me, it makes more sense to have the photo in the large text section that has no photos, versus jammed in higher up. I'm not sure what device you're accessing Wikipedia from, but the quantity of photos early in the article has an impact on how this page renders for readers; I was hoping to address that by moving some of the photos to other sections where they are discussed in detail. Grk1011 (talk) 15:46, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]