Timeline of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts
From its beginning, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts has been a place for artists to find their unique voices and make a difference in the world
Founded in 1876, SMFA’s history has always been interconnected with the major art movements’ debates, wars and other global events, and discoveries that have shaped the world as we know it today. Now, we celebrate 150 years of pushing boundaries, building community, and engaging with ideas and art across mediums, as well as the opening of the next chapter of SMFA at Tufts. When you join the SMFA community, you become part of its evolving story.
An invitation
We invite you to make your mark on our timeline and let us know what is missing. Email us with your additions and/or share your favorite SMFA stories or photos.
1870
The state legislature passes the Massachusetts Drawing Act. The Act made arts education and instruction in public school not only a value, but a right of the Commonwealth's citizens. It stated, "Any city or town may, and every city or town having more than ten thousand inhabitants, shall annually make provision for giving free instruction in industrial or mechanical drawing to persons over fifteen years of age, either in day or evening schools, under the direction of the school committee." Part of an earnest push against machine-made goods in favor of higher-quality American industrial design, this paved the way for greater interest in the arts and pursuit of artistic careers. That same year, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston was established on the top floor of the Boston Athenaeum, America's oldest private library and an intellectual hub for the city's cultured "Brahmins", the social and economic elite of Boston in the 1800s.
1876
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston opens its doors to the public in a new Gothic revival building in Copley Square Boston. Much of its initial collection came from the Boston Athenaeum. Part of the Museum's original mission was to offer instruction in fine arts, and that included opening a school of drawing and painting. The Museum's Permanent Committee got underway with preparations over the next six months to make that vision come to life quickly.
The Permanent Committee functioned the school’s governing body for many years, and was heavily rooted in MFA Boston leadership, initially including MFA President Martin Brimmer, second Trustee and Honorary Director, Charles C. Perkins, and the museum’s first Director General Charles G. Loring.
1877
The School of Drawing and Painting (which later changes its name to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts) opens in the basement of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in Copley Square. Classes officially began for the school's first 80 students on January 2, amidst an epic blizzard. German painter Emil Otto Grundmann came from Germany specifically to serve as the school's first director. He grounded the curriculum in principles of light, color, and figurative work from his studies in Dresden and Antwerp.
1879
The Boston Arts Student Association is founded by the School of Drawing and Painting Students. It later became the Copley Society, the school's first alumni community.
1882
Life drawing classes with live models are introduced at the school. Admissions required a portfolio and for applicants to pass a written human anatomy exam. Life classes for men and women were initially held on alternate days but eventually merged.
That same academic year produced the inaugural issue of The Art Student, an influential student-led publication that introduced art criticism, opinion pieces, and exhibition reviews and helped launch many students’ careers. Student life unfolded even more when a department of Decorative Design class was given full reign over shaping interiors for the school’s lunchroom. They choose an ancient Egypt theme.
1889
The inaugural Artist’s Festival takes place in April at the MFA, Boston. This event, which drew SMFA students, faculty, and highbrow Bostonians alike, was arguably society’s most coveted invitation of the social season. Over 1,000 guests attended in costume, including the museum guards and serving staff. The event brought a boon to local tailors and seamstresses, while artists dressed models in creations of their own design.
1890
The Boston School of painters is established in the same year that Grundmann dies. A museum committee selected Edmund Tarbell and Frank Weston Benson to take over teaching drawing and painting. This duo of Massachusetts-born SMFA graduates both went to Paris together in 1883 and pursued a prestigious arts education at the Academie Julian before they returned to the US to open a Boston-based studio in 1888. Together, seeking to create an "Academy of a higher order," they expanded the school's physical space with the MFA and also introduced advanced classes, particularly in composition.
1899
The school introduces the Paige Travelling Scholar Grant, and, the first recipient, Mary Brewster Hazelton sails to Europe. In 1894, James William Paige left a bequest of $30,000 to the Museum School to establish a travel fund for artists. This fund grew with support from others in the years to come and was to be used to send SMFA students to Europe to study art for a period of two years. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, recipients typically traveled to Paris, Rome, or Florence and received $800 per year for two years. The tradition continues today with the SMFA Traveling Fellowships program, which awards SMFA alumni with up to $10,000 each to travel across the globe.
1901
The school officially changes its name to The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, often called just "the Museum School" and becomes a department of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
1907
The Stuart Club, an all-women’s residential hall opens at 102 The Fenway. Women were admitted to the school from Day One. However, they were mainly day students from the local area up until this point and those who came to study from further afield were required to secure their own accommodations. The Stuart Club broke down barriers to welcome a more geographically diverse student body to the school.
1909
MFA Boston closes its Copley location and moves its growing collection (via horse and buggy) to a larger and more fireproof new building in the Fenway neighborhood. At the same time, a temporary building at the Fenway was completed for SMFA, and opened its doors to classes on February 8 with enough space to accommodate a growing student body and offer in-house private student studios to advanced students rent-free.
1910
SMFA introduces its first community programming, a design course for Boston children. This led to a dual enrollment program for high school students.
1912
Huger Elliot, an architect and former director of Rhode Island School of Design, is appointed as the first Director of SMFA as well as head of the design department. Tarbell and Benson resigned in protest, marking the first of three major “pedagogical battles” fought in the school’s formative years. This one concerned a debate about whether the curriculum should continue centered around the more traditional artistic tradition of the Old Masters or also incorporate the introduction of modern art and design that was on the verge of exploding on the American art scene and was first most notably seen at the first Armory Show in New York City in 1913.
After Tarbell and Benson departed, the SMFA curriculum was reformed to add theory prerequisites (especially in the department of design) before students were allowed to dive into applied design mediums like jewelrymaking, silversmithing (which SMFA was well-known for during that time), interior design, and bookbinding.
1916
SMFA opens a class in illustration. At the time, illustration was a new medium replacing expensive engravings in book publishing. This is an example (of many) of the ways that SMFA began preparing students not only to be great artists but also for careers in the arts. The class was taught by Elizabeth Shippen Green Elliot, an established children's book illustrator.
1917
Despite the fact that SMFA has a majority female-identifying student body, enrollment lowers due to male students enlisting in the US Army in World War I.
1918
Classes open three weeks late as a result of an influenza epidemic that ravages Boston. Just 90 students were enrolled. The MFA Boston Trustees voted on whether to close the School and ultimately rejected the idea. Meanwhile, SMFA implemented a new foundation year for first year students, who now were required to complete specific courses including drawing from the cast, anatomy, brushwork, theory of design and color, as well as attend a lecture series.
1925
Tarbell returns to SMFA (after many years spent in Washington DC with an established painting career) and leads the school's first capital campaign. The campaign fundraised for new SMFA facilities to meet the needs of a significant post-war student body population. The school hired Guy Lowell, the same architect that designed the MFA Boston, to design two buildings for SMFA: "a three-story Georgian structure of Harvard brick" on Evans Way and a second building on Museum Road which would include studios, an exhibition hall, a library, and gallery space.
1928
The permanent SMFA building is completed, opening its doors in time to celebrate the school's fiftieth birthday. Its location was carefully positioned at the epicenter of the city's art scene, next the MFA Boston, diagonal to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and within walking distance of Massachusetts College of Art and Design (then the Massachusetts Normal Arts School) and the Boston Architectural College (then the Boston Architectural Club). Patrons of Boston's arts contributed casts, paintings, a bronze bass-relief in tribute to Grundmann, and 13 framed drawings of the Boston Public Library and MFA Boston by John Singer Sargent. The MFA Boston lent works from its permanent collection. More than 800 volumes were donated by various benefactors to launch the SMFA library collection.
1926
Major donations from SMFA alumni and benefactors lead to new scholarships. While some of these were exclusively for women, one was a travelling fund geared exclusively towards men.
1927
Boston-born artist and educator Lois Mailou Jones, a Black woman, graduates with the prestigious Susan Minot Lane Scholarship in Design. Shamefully, the director of SMFA refused to hire her as faculty, telling her to find a job in the South where "her people" would hire her. Jones went on to study painting at Howard University, and became a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. She later trained in Paris at the Académie Julian, and became an accomplished textile designer and professor. In 2006, Lois Mailou Jones: The Early Works: Paintings and Patterns 1927–1937 opened at SMFA to honor her legacy.
1928
SMFA launches a six-week summer program to better serve the community with arts education. That program continues today as the Pre-College Studio Art Intensive.
1931
Tensions between traditionalist and progressive aesthetic values in the departments of drawing and painting lead to faculty resignations. Many of these openings were filled by instructors from London's Slade School, "a hotbed of contemporary British art." Art critics of the day noted the "liberalizing" force this had on students and their respective practices.
1936
Allan Rohan Crite graduates from SMFA. He is remembered as "the quiet radical who painted Black life in Boston" and mentored artists and activists.
1937
Karl Zerbe becomes head of the department of painting and drawing. The German-born artist fled the Nazi regime for the US, and just in time as the Nazis later blacklisted his work as "degenerate art." Zerbe became known for encaustic (hot wax painting) work and, at SMFA, for nurturing individual expression as well as the way he uniquely emphasized color. The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston opened its doors on Newbury Street in Back Bay, initially as a sister institution to New York City's MoMA known as the Boston Museum of Modern Art.
1938
Richard Scarry enrolls at SMFA, studying at the school until he is drafted to fight in WWII in 1942. He went on to create his own bestselling Busy World series of illustrated children's books introducing young readers to everyday life, roles and jobs with whimsical scenes involving animal characters. Scarry sold a whopping 100 million books in his lifetime.
1942
SMFA offers an accelerated summer course to help students finish their degrees before being drafted to the military to defend America in WWII. Other courses were offered to non-students who wanted to "acquire war-related skills," and these subjects included map-drafting and camouflaging.
1944
The first students dual-enroll at SMFA and Tufts University. Later that year, SMFA moved out of its building and leased it to the US Army due to the war efforts. Classes temporarily relocated to the MFA next door and student work was exhibited at the Boston Symphony Orchestra–forming the roots for the Tanglewood Program.
1945
Bachelor of Science in Art Education degree established in partnership with Tufts University. This teacher training course required three years of study at the Museum School with 18 months at Tufts. Tufts faculty members taught the more popular required courses at the Museum School both for the convenience of students and to facilitate the fulfillment of requirements. This degree program evolved into the current Master of Arts in Teaching degree that is popular today.
1947
The Tanglewood Summer Program launches in the Berkshire Mountains, running until 1952 and attracting notable guest professors including Hyman Bloom and Oska Kokoschka. The program was the brainchild of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which, looking to make a comeback after the war, invited SMFA students and faculty to continue the relationship they'd created in 1944 under one roof, to bring the arts to its summer home in Pittsfield, MA. The summer institute offered courses in drawing, painting, sculpture, design, anatomy and perspective. The United Nations awarded SMFA a grant in 1949 allowing the school to offer scholarships to international students.
1947
Elective classes are formalized, encouraging students to branch out to experiment in other mediums beyond what might be their natural comfort zone. In the mid to late 40s, a generation of soon-to-be well-know Post-War American artists entered art schools, many of whom were supported by the GI Bill. Noted artists who studied at SMFA included: Cy Twombly, John Wilson, and Ellsworth Kelly.
1953
Jim Dine studies at SMFA for a formative year. After taking night classes in painting in Cincinnati, Ohio, he was drawn to Boston to work closely with Ture Bengtz, a charismatic and influential faculty member at the time. Dine returned to Ohio for his BFA afterwards and by the late 50s, his multimedia practice was on the rise, leading to more than 300 exhibitions worldwide to-date.
Sculptor Nancy Schön completes her students at SMFA and Tufts and goes on to a long career creating beloved works and public art such as the "Make Way for Ducklings” sculptures at the Boston Public Garden, "Eeyore" at the Newton Free Library, "Myrtle the Turtle" at Beacon Hill’s Myrtle Street Playground, and "Charlie the Snail" at Boston Children’s.
1956
SMFA establishes a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in partnership with Tufts University. Students took their studio courses at SMFA and liberal arts and sciences requirements at Tufts, receiving their diplomas from Tufts University. For a single year, the ICA Boston moved its collection to SMFA. This cemented the strong relationship between the school and the museum which continues into the present with SMFA alumni exhibiting work at the ICA Boston, contributing as interns and staff, and SMFA classes visiting the galleries for in-depth study.
1961
Joan Jonas enrolls at SMFA, where she studies drawing and sculpture. Jonas is respected as a pioneer in performance art and video installation, and for the way in which she incorporates choreography into her work. In Fall 2026, Jonas will return to SMFA to speak at the Beckwith Lecture.
1966
The Wingspread Conference takes place at a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed conference center in Wisconsin, bringing together leadership from 16 independent art schools and university art departments to discuss the future of art education. The conference was the brainchild of Bartlett Hayes, an SMFA trustee in favor of a radical reshaping of the school's curriculum.
1968
Introduction of Review Boards and removal of the grading system: These changes were part of a wider restructuring instigated by Hayes, SMFA faculty proposals, and the Wingspread Conference. The first review boards consisted of two professors, two senior students, and one junior. Review boards have gone through many different formats since but continue to represent a major part of an SMFA education today.
Community impact programs launched through the vision of William Bagnall, an architect-designer and the new director of SMFA. This included collaborations with carceral education programs, mental health agencies, and BIPOC-led art initiatives.
1969
The foundation year requirement, which was established in 1912, is eliminated at the request of students.
1971
A number of artists who would later go on to form a portion of the Boston School of Photography begin their studies at SMFA during the 1970s. They included: Pat Hearn, Mark Morrisroe, David Armstrong, Phillip-Lorca dicorcia, Nan Goldin, and Shellburne Thurber.
1977
SMFA Centennial is celebrated by unveiling plans to expand and renovate the school.
1978
The Leo and Betty Beckwith Lecture series is established to bring artists and cultural thinkers at the leading edge of contemporary art to the SMFA community; past speakers have included Arthur Jaffa, Yvonne Rainer, Sanford Biggers, Amy Sillman, and Harry Dodge.
1988
A renovation and expansion of SMFA's 230 the Fenway building, designed by architect Graham Gund, doubles the size of the school, adding an auditorium for visiting artist lectures, a larger library and galleries, a new cafeteria, and the Katherine Lane Weems Atrium connecting the two existing buildings. Bess, the famous rhinoceros statue gracing the school’s front entrance was donated by MFA Boston at this time. Katharine Lane Weems, the 14-foot-long fiberglass sculpture's creator, was born in Boston in 1899 and attended the SMFA in 1918. Bess continues to welcome anyone who walks through the doors to this day.
The Atrium quickly became the scene of avant garde performances, often led by students, faculty, and alumni, such as Mobius Art Group, Boston-based artist-run collective formed in the 1970s, and Kaiju Big Battel, a performance group formed in the 1990s that staged wrestling matches with characters and costumes borrowed from kaiju-style monster films of Japan.
1989
SMFA alum, and noted photography and performance artist, Mark Morrisroe passes away from an AIDS-related death, opening conversations about the epidemic and its relationship with the art world–both locally and nationally.
1990
The courtyard behind SMFA is constructed, including a sculpture shed for carving, ceramics kilns, and 14 workstations. There was also dedicated space granted for students to install murals or "aerosol art." During this time, students began to informally create graffiti installations inside SMFA bathrooms.
1991
The Tufts University Art Gallery formally opens with the completion of the Aidekman Arts Center on the Medford/Somerville campus, which brought together several exhibition spaces. Later on, it became the Tufts University Art Galleries after the merger with SMFA.
2015
Due to significant financial concerns and low enrollment, the Museum decides to sell SMFA. Tufts began negotiations to purchase the art school, citing the close relationship the two institutes had maintained for more than 70 years. Tufts had long offered liberal arts courses, as well as accredited Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degrees to SMFA students, while SMFA offered courses in studio arts to Tufts students.
2016
SMFA officially becomes part of Tufts University, not only stabilizing the school financially but also offering the resources of an R1 research institution to SMFA students, faculty and staff. In turn, Tufts benefits from the resources of a leading visual arts school to the wider Tufts community. Both now share multiple dual-degree programs, faculty, student clubs, libraries, labs, and other resources. Nancy Bauer becomes the inaugural dean of SMFA at Tufts, which is part of Tufts School of Arts and Sciences. In addition, the SMFA gallery and library are incorporated in the Tufts University Art Galleries and Tisch Library. SMFA at Tufts admits its first cohorts, extending to these art students Tufts' commitment to meeting 100% of the demonstrated financial need for all admitted undergraduate students.
2020
SMFA at Tufts graduates its first cohort of BFAs students while the university and world grapple with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2022
The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) opens its long-awaited Green Line Extension into Medford, allowing for a direct connection via train between Tufts' Fenway Campus and the Medford/Somerville campus.
2023
Architect Scheri Fultineer is appointed Dean of SMFA and Professor of the Practice and will lead the school's first strategic plan since joining Tufts University.
2025
Tufts announces the Tufts Tuition Pact, a policy where U.S. undergraduate students whose families make less than $150,000 a year will attend tuition-free, beginning with students entering in the fall of 2026. Students with an annual family income of less than $60,000 will now typically receive a financial aid package with no student loans. The new policy is meant to ensure that students from all socioeconomic backgrounds, including middle-income families, know that a Tufts education is within reach.
2026
SMFA celebrates its 150th anniversary.