Opens November 14, 2024

Huntington Avenue Entrance Commission: The Knowledge Keepers

“What is a statue of an anonymous Plains rider doing in front of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston? Why is he wearing a war bonnet yet unarmed, and also a Navajo necklace? Why is he supplicating? I often asked myself these questions when passing the statue on the trolley while attending the nearby Boston Latin School in the 1960s and the Museum School a decade later.”

For the inaugural “Huntington Avenue Entrance Commission,” the MFA invited internationally recognized artist Alan Michelson (b. 1953) to create monumental works for the two empty plinths outside the Museum’s historic building. Entitled The Knowledge Keepers, Michelson’s installation forms, in part, a challenging response to Appeal to the Great Spirit, a sculpture by Cyrus Dallin that has stood at the center of the MFA’s entrance plaza since 1912. Michelson, a Mohawk member of Six Nations of the Grand River who was raised in Boston and attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, sources from both Indigenous and Western cultures to create works in a varied range of media and materials. His multivalent practice includes award-winning public art, and his work has been recently featured in the Tate Modern, MoMA PS1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Gwangju Biennale.

“I’m honored to be the artist chosen to inaugurate the ‘Huntington Avenue Entrance Commission,’” said Michelson. “In 1909, when Cyrus Dallin cast Appeal to the Great Spirit in Paris, the image of the noble but defeated Plains warrior as an exemplar of the ‘vanishing race’ was popular worldwide. In 2024, I hope my site-specific installation will challenge ingrained stereotypes and racial myths by presenting a story of survivance and agency, not defeat or appeal, and I thank the Museum for supporting this work.”

This is the first of a new series of annual commissions that engages artists to create site-specific artworks for the Museum’s Huntington Avenue Entrance. It is part of a broader initiative to activate the MFA campus, which has included outdoor film screenings and installations such as “Garden for Boston” (2021), led by artists Ekua Holmes and Elizabeth James-Perry (Aquinnah Wampanoag). The Knowledge Keepers also forms part of the Boston Public Art Triennial, a citywide project launching May 2025 with many other institutions around Greater Boston participating.

  • Huntington Avenue Entrance

Sponsors

Sponsored by the Richard K. Lubin Family Foundation.

Shapiro Family Foundation logo

Generously supported by the Museum Council Artist in Residency Program Fund. Additional support from The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation, Laura and Tait Nielsen, an anonymous donor, and the Hilsinger Janson Fund for Native American Art.

Produced in partnership with the Boston Public Art Triennial.