Boston jaunt overview

Aside from a couple of scares related to misplacing my passport and PR card, the trip to Boston went very well.  I was fortunate to be taking Porter and flying out of Island Airport.  Indeed, unless I can't help it at all, I am only going to fly Porter for the next 18 months, since Pearson and Air Canada more generally have proven to be completely incompetent with breakdowns at every level.  There was a very short line-up to check in and show my passport, but the security line was quite short, and even coming back it was only about 15-20 minutes to get through security.  Oddly enough no one looked at my ArriveCan app, though they did on the way back from Washington DC.

Anyway, we landed in Boston just after 1.  I figured out how to catch the Silver Line (actually a busway) and took it to the ICA, which was free for me due to reciprocal privileges.  I thought the exhibit on figurative painting was the main reason to visit.

Doron Langberg, Bather, 2021

Celeste Rapone, Soft Core, 2021

I wandered around the Seaport a bit but couldn't find anything I wanted to eat.  Somewhere between there and the Financial District, I ran across a Panera and grabbed lunch.  I finally figured out how to catch the Green Line and headed over to the Museum of Fine Arts.  I think I arrived just slightly after 4.  I had timed tickets to the Turner exhibit at 5:30, but I was able to check out other parts of the museum in the meantime, and I started with the Guston Now exhibit.

I'll write more about the Guston exhibit separately, but my main reaction was that all the fuss and furor was overblown.  Yes, there was an entire room full of Klan-related paintings, but it is incredible that modern sensitivities are so fragile that visitors can't be trusted to put these things into context.  I guess a great big trigger label needs to be pasted across Picasso's Guernica to satisfy people who don't want to be challenged by art.  But what can I say, I am an elitist art snob who happens to think being taken out of one's comfort zone is important at least some of the time...

The exhibit had a few of Guston's earliest works, was relatively light on his abstract period and then turned to the later figurative works, leaning a bit heavily on the Klan imagery and maybe was a little light on the charnel-house aspect of many of his late works.  I particularly liked this painting (held in Amsterdam though I don't recall seeing it on any of my visits there).

Philip Guston, Painting, Smoking, Eating, 1973

After that, I mostly looked at European art while wandering around and waiting for my turn to enter the Turner exhibit.

Paul Signac, Antibes, The Pink Cloud, 1916

The Turner exhibit was good.  They had managed to get the Burning of Parliament from the Cleveland Museum of Art, and quite a large number of paintings and prints from the Tate Britain.  I probably had seen many of them while in London (and of course Cleveland), but it was still powerful to see them all in one place.

Certainly the most interesting paintings were all nautical ones.  Here are two I liked.

J.M.W. Turner, 'Hurrah! for the Whaler Erebus! Another Fish!', ca. 1846

J.M.W. Turner, Peace--Burial at Sea, ca. 1842

After the Turner, I went through the American room.  As it happens, I was looking for the Hopper, but I didn't see it at first.  The American rooms were dominated by 18th and 19th Century works with a few early 20th Century paintings (mostly Sargent and Cassatt).

William Merritt Chase, Reflections, ca. 1892

John Singer Sargent, Rehearsal of the Pasdeloup Orchestra, ca. 1880

I finally asked some volunteers, and they pointed me to the third floor, which I hadn't realized existed.  While it is on the American side, and most of the paintings are by mid-to-late 20th Century Americans, there were some European artists as well, such as Max Beckmann.

Edward Hopper, Drug Store, 1927

Jackson Pollock, Troubled Queen, 1945

Max Beckmann, Double Portrait, 1946

It was a fine set of rooms, but it was a bit surprising how little post-Impressionist art the MFA had in its collection (or at least on view), compared to the Met or the Art Institute.

It was around 7:45 when I finally left the MFA.  It was actually open for a few more hours, but I had seen quite a bit and wanted to grab dinner before checking in at the hotel.  I was a little disappointed at the scarcity of restaurants in that part of Back Bay.  Certainly there would have been more in Chicago.  I saw a big Whole Foods, but I didn't feel like going in there.  I finally found a sushi place, which was pretty good.

At the Oasis Guest House thy had upgraded me, which was nice.  I was pretty tired from all the walking, so I read a bit more of Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread (which I picked up on a trip to Pittsburgh) and crashed.  I thought the free Continental breakfast was pretty good.  

I had a bit over an hour before the Isabel Gardner Museum opened, so I wandered around Back Bay a bit.  There was some delay in getting into the Gardner but I was able to get my free pass after all.  The Gardner is a bit like a mix of the Barnes Collection (if Barnes has stopped with pre-Impressionists like Whistler) and the Cloisters.

John Singer Sargent, El Jaleo, 1882

Of course, one of the biggest stories about the Gardner is the 1990 theft of several masterpieces. In my mind the Vermeer was the greatest single loss. I do hope it (and the other paintings) will be recovered in my lifetime. I wandered around for close to two hours before I decided I really ought to be getting over to the airport.

I headed back for the T and eventually made my way back onto the Silver Line. I think I managed to get to the airport by 1. I was hoping to go standby on an earlier flight (than 3:55), but I forgot that Porter only has a handful of flights, and in fact the check-in desk was closed until 1:50! I wasn't thrilled about this, as I was going to have to eat lunch at the airport. I think this happened to me in Pittsburgh as well. It's one of the downsides of flying Porter.

While there wasn't any food outside the security check-in, it was possible to go over to Terminal C and they had a Dunkin Donuts, so I had a quick lunch there before heading back to Terminal E and checking in for my flight. It was pretty uneventful waiting for my flight, but I will say that that part of Logan Airport had plenty of seats, which was a nice change. My flight was on time and it was a smooth ride back (and I even had an empty seat next to me on the flight itself!).  As I mentioned, even dealing with security was no problem, though the shuttle bus to Union did get snarled in Jays traffic.

On the whole, a good, if somewhat exhausting, trip.