Annual Site-Specific Installations Will Enliven the MFA’s Campus

BOSTON (June 6, 2024)—The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), has announced a new series of annual commissions that invites artists to create site-specific artworks for the Huntington Avenue Entrance. For the inaugural project the Museum has selected internationally recognized artist Alan 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. Michelson will create monumental works that will be placed on the two empty plinths outside the MFA’s historic building and form, in part, a response to Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit, a sculpture that has occupied the center of the entrance plaza since 1912. The project, entitled The Knowledge Keepers, will be unveiled on November 14, 2024.

"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,” said Michelson. “I'm honored to be the artist chosen to inaugurate the Huntington Avenue Entrance Commission. 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.”

Sourcing from both Indigenous and Western cultures, Michelson works in a varied range of media and materials, among them painting, sculpture, photography, sound, video, glass and stone. He has been creating public art installations since 1987. The artist will discuss his practice in the MFA’s Deborah and Martin Hale Visiting Artist Lecture on November 14, hosted in conjunction with the unveiling of The Knowledge Keepers.

“We’re honored to launch this initiative with the work of Alan Michelson, an artist who has a long-lasting relationship with the Museum dating back to his student days. He will undoubtedly create a fascinating project that responds directly to the multilayered histories of the space and the communities that we serve,” said Matthew Teitelbaum, Ann and Graham Gund Director. “The Huntington Avenue Entrance Commission is incredibly meaningful for the MFA, as it will enable us to create a warmer welcome for Bostonians and visitors from all over the world as they enter the Museum.”

Michelson was chosen for the inaugural Entrance Commission by a cross-departmental group of curators, led by Ian Alteveer, Beal Family Chair of Contemporary Art. Alteveer is co-curating the project with Marina Tyquiengco (CHamoru), Ellyn McColgan Associate Curator of Native American Art. Tyquiengco previously worked with Michelson in 2022, when his work Hanödaga:yas (Town Destroyer): Whirlwind Series (2022) entered the MFA’s collection and was displayed in the Art of the Americas Wing.

“I am thrilled that the MFA continues to center work by Indigenous artists and that we can build on our engagement with living artists in such a visible and prominent way,” said Alteveer. “The project Alan Michelson has proposed for our main entrance plaza will be a very moving and impactful response to its complex specificities."

“It is immensely exciting to work with Alan and Ian on this forthcoming installation. I have long admired Alan's practice, which combines deep research into often little-known Indigenous histories of place with a commitment to site specificity,” said Tyquiengco. “Alan's connection to Boston, as someone who spent formative years here, is so significant.”

As part of the MFA 2020 strategic plan, the Museum has activated the campus with initiatives including outdoor film screenings and installations such as Garden for Boston (2021), which was led by artists Ekua Holmes and Elizabeth James-Perry (Aquinnah Wampanoag) as a response to Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit.

Dallin’s Appeal depicts a Native American man astride a horse with his arms outstretched and dressed in a mix of Lakota- and Diné-style regalia. The sculpture was not made specifically for the MFA’s campus—it was cast in France and originally debuted at the Paris Salon before traveling to Boston. Critics in the early 20th century praised the work for its “fine dignity” while describing its figure, and Dallin himself believed that it honored Indigenous peoples and even critiqued the social injustices that they faced. Today, the MFA’s interpretation recognizes that the Appeal is based on an inaccurate accumulation of Native symbols and ultimately capitalized on the degrading myth of the “vanishing race,” which portrayed Indigenous peoples as disappearing in the face of modern civilization. Michelson’s project will build on ongoing efforts to re-contextualize the sculpture.

The Knowledge Keepers will also feature as part of the Boston Public Art Triennial, launching in spring 2025. The MFA is participating alongside the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and MIT List Visual Arts Center to present extraordinary temporary and permanent public art projects in addition to the 15 commissioned Triennial projects that will be displayed around the city between May and October 2025.

About the Artist

For over 35 years, Michelson—now based in New York—has been a leading practitioner of socially engaged, critically aware, site-specific art grounded in local context and informed by the retrieval of repressed histories. Recent exhibitions include the 14th Gwangju Biennale, Enmeshed at the Tate Modern, Greater New York at MoMA/PS1 and Alan Michelson: Wolf Nation at the Whitney. In addition to the MFA, his work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Canada, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Michelson’s diverse practice includes award-winning public art, and Mantle, his permanent, site-specific monument honoring Virginia’s Native nations, was dedicated at the capitol in Richmond in 2018. Michelson is co-founder and co-curator, with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, of the groundbreaking Indigenous New York series, which raised the visibility of contemporary Indigenous art in New York and beyond. His essays have appeared in Aperture, Frieze and October, and his work has been featured in numerous publications including the New York Times and Art in America. His group exhibitions Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Land at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site and Illustrating Agency at the Baltimore Museum of Art are currently on view. His solo exhibition Alan Michelson: Prophetstown will open at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in July 2024.

Sponsors

The “Huntington Avenue Entrance Commission” is sponsored by the Richard K. Lubin Family Foundation. Generously supported by the Museum Council Artist in Residency Program Fund. Additional support from The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation, and the Hilsinger Janson Fund for Native American Art. Produced in partnership with the Boston Public Art Triennial.

About the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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