There are big changes afoot at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.
The MFA announced Saturday, May 19, that Saundra Lane, a museum trustee, has donated more than 6,000 photographs, 100 works on paper and 25 paintings, "one of the largest and most significant gifts in its history," according to MetroWest Daily News.
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"We have overnight transformed the photography collection from good to great,'' said Karen Haas, the MFA's Curator of the Lane Collection.
Included in the donation are 2,500 photographs from Charles Sheeler (his entire photographic estate), the same amount from Edward Weston and 500 photographs by Ansel Adams. The MFA photography collection is now two-thirds bigger, increasing from 9,000 to 15,000.
The gift is probably worth hundreds of millions of dollars (as the MFA will only say that the dollar value probably runs into "nine figures'').
Lane and her late husband Williiam gave the museum 90 American paintings and works on paper more than 20 years ago, which hang in MFA galleries named after them.
Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum, said, "The superb collection assembled by Saundra and Bill is a very personal one, reflecting the Lanes' cultivated tastes and their close relationships with a number of major artists of the 20th century."
