How SMFA Grew with Other Boston Arts Institutions Over the Years

Since its founding, the School of Museum of Fine Arts has always grown in partnership with Boston’s other arts and cultural institutions—incubating one another and future generations of artists as they grew more established. 

At its root, Boston is a center of craft and trade with esteemed makers like silversmith Paul Revere putting it on the map. The city soon also developed into a center for the arts. The country’s first private library, The Boston Athenaeum, opened its doors in 1807, nurturing the city’s literary and artistic scene with a growing collection of books that it eagerly loaned to its intellectual members, including author Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888). 

The Athenaeum served as a first temporary home for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1870, offering up the fifth floor of its building. In 1876, the Museum opened in its first dedicated space in nearby Copley Square, originally with works on loan from the Athenaeum’s collection until MFA trustees and curators began acquiring the phenomenal comprehensive collection of more than 500,000 works of art that it offers visitors (including current SMFA students) today. Just one year later, the School of Drawing and Painting (later renamed the School of Museum of Fine Arts) opened in the MFA's basement. 

In 1899, Isabella Stewart Gardner, a socialite, astute collector, and generous patron, began construction of Fenway Court (now the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum). With the building finished in 1901, Gardner and her curatorial team then took two years to install her priceless collection of ancient and (at the time) contemporary art and to plant a lush garden in the palatial courtyard. Debuting in 1903, the Gardner quickly turned the staid Boston art scene upside down in a good way, hosting dinner parties, concerts, exhibitions, and gatherings that brought artists, creatives, and the public together in community. From the beginning, SMFA students and faculty were part of that community. 

Then, in 1909, when the school opened its permanent doors within view of the Gardner, that relationship became even closer. Today, the Gardner continues to keep its doors open for SMFA students with the Polly Thayer Starr Internship. Open only to SMFA students, the fully-funded internship provides students with experience in studio programming under the umbrella of Public Programs and Community Engagement at the Gardner Museum. The intern primarily works with the Studio Programs Coordinator to plan and facilitate hands-on programming in the Museum’s Bertucci Education Studio. Funding for this internship is made possible by a generous grant from the Polly Thayer Starr Charitable Trust. Polly Thayer Starr (1904-2006) was an SMFA alum and accomplished artist who captured the culture and whimsy of her native Boston with a unique combination of detail, emotion, and curiosity.

Once it became established in its own right, SMFA was in a position to support other institutions as they launched. Chief among them was the ICA/Boston, which, though founded in 1936, did not have a permanent home and leased spaces across the city for its offices and exhibitions until the completion of its new building in Boston's Seaport neighborhood. 

In 1956, the museum moved its galleries to SMFA at 230 The Fenway, where it stayed until 1959, holding exhibitions and openings in the school’s gallery spaces while remaining a distinct institution. In 1957, the ICA briefly established what it called a “provisional collection” in partnership with the MFA, from which some works remain in the MFA's collection today. 

This cemented the strong relationship between the school and the museum, which continues to this day with SMFA alumni exhibiting work at the ICA, contributing as interns and staff, and SMFA classes visiting the galleries for in-depth study. 

Nowadays, Boston’s sophisticated and experimental art ecosystem, and SMFA’s location right in the heart of it all, are a big part of what attracts students to SMFA and helps them launch their careers.

Image: Marr, Thomas E., -1910. Boston. Fenway Court. Court looking toward the south. 1903. Web. 29 Jul 2026. <https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/66830461d>.