The exceptional inventiveness among visual artists between the 1870s and 1930s mirrored and contributed to larger social transformations: in the industrialized world, the emergence of new technologies such as electricity transformed the cadences of daily life and experience of light and color. The question of cognition and perception changed with the emergence of the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry, and the body itself became a new arena of analysis with the invention of x-rays. Discover how the MFA’s modern art collection exists in dialogue with these and other key phenomena of modernity.
Pat Berman, Theodora L. and Stanley H. Feldberg Professor of Art, Wellesley College
Wednesday, February 25, 2026