BOSTON — This fall, “Political Intent,” a new exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is conducting an experiment on how to talk politics with gallery visitors. The show, by eight female artists from four continents, is part of #mfaNOW, an initiative aimed at dissolving the starchy separations between museum and community, politics and art, contemporary work and older pieces. The goal is to push visitors’ experience beyond the rarefied gallery walls and encourage discourse on complex topics inside the museum and in the surrounding world.

The museum is trying to accomplish this by morphing into a community center, lecture hall and nightclub as it extends hours and expands programming.


“The museum’s not just throwing up the old masters,” said Lionel McPherson, associate professor of philosophy at Tufts University and a participant on a “Political Intent” panel on violence and the media. “It’s in their interest to remain relevant at a time when people are wondering what is the point of art.”

In “Political Intent,” Patty Chang’s video “Melons (at a Loss),” jolts viewers from across the gallery as it shows the artist spooning melon seeds from her breast. A sculpture by Amalia Pica, “Now, Speak!,” is a granite lectern that hundreds of visitors have stood at to read historical speeches or expound on current topics extemporaneously. A giant kitchen grater has been transformed into a menacing room divider by Mona Hatoum, called the “Grater Divide.” Kara Walker’s “The Rich Soil Down There” recasts the seemingly charming antebellum tradition of cut-paper silhouettes into a wall-length display of racial and sexual violence. Asma Aksamija’s “Mosque Manifesto” looks at the mosque through lenses of architecture, history, culture, religion, identity and displacement.

“This exhibit explores politics more broadly than just the American election system,” explained Jen Mergel, a senior curator of contemporary art at the museum, and organizer of “Political Intent.” “It looks on the local and community level that we negotiate 365 days a year. Every curator has a choice about what — and whom — to include, and that always has political consequences.”


An unexpected piece in the exhibition, which runs through July 30, is “The MacArthur Screens: The Occupation of Japan.” Painted in 1947 and 1948, the miniature screens are composed in the rakuchu rakugai tradition, made for 16th- and 17th-century warlords to glorify their exploits. Golden clouds glow over a cheerful postwar Tokyo, where a dignified-looking Gen. Douglas MacArthur salutes a city of baseball fields, Western-style buildings and strolling citizens. No crumbled temples or scarred victims. Commissioned by an American soldier working in public relations in Japan, they are political propaganda, translated into art.

To discuss issues of political and artistic import, forums will run in the gallery’s open-floor space. Artists, historians, philosophers, activists and community members will speak on pressing social issues facing the United States: violence in the media; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender concerns; homelessness; migration; nationality; inclusion and exclusion. “Every 28 Hours,” a theater performance inspired by the work of Black Lives Matter, will be held in the gallery. And on four dates leading up to the election, the museum planned free, all-night events; the last one is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 4. The first was held on Sept. 17, from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m., and around 7,000 people joined the party.

“I hesitate to use the word ‘edgy,’” said Oliver Sellers-Garcia, 35, director of sustainability and environment for Somerville, Massachusetts, who stayed at the museum from 9:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. during the first overnight, “but the museum was being proactive in engaging their visitors in more ways than ‘Just come look at our stuff.’”


Installations by Frances Stark, Imogen Cunningham and Terry Winters are also open through the night. Christian Marclay’s 24-hour film, “The Clock,” can be viewed in its entirety. Studio space is open for creating murals, and live models pose in galleries where drawing and construction materials are provided. disc jockeys play at two dance floors. Movies, lawn games, late-night fun runs outside the museum and stargazing are all on the roster. Sunrise yoga and strong coffee are available to art-saturated patrons in the morning.

To capture the political energy of college students who are willing to visit a museum on a Saturday night, as well as to possibly convert the politically disengaged, the local nonprofit MassVote is registering new voters at the overnight events. At the first, it registered 225 from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. — more than MassVote had ever collected at a single event.

“Apart from the value of having voter registration at a museum, it’s kind of a mission statement,” McPherson said. “They’re trying to expand beyond the traditional expectation of what a museum is.”

Sellers-Garcia said of the party atmosphere: “You felt a little transgressive walking around with a drink. But people were exploring, and the museum was open to people using the space differently.”