Counter History: Contemporary Art from the Collection

How do we remember the past, and how does it inform the present? Artists often question our shared history as they frame ways for us to understand it differently. This new installation of works from the MFA’s collection of contemporary art—including many new acquisitions—offers multiple possibilities to reconsider the past through the art of our time.

Three interrelated thematic sections make up this impactful display. “Monuments” focuses on the ways artists use grand scale, references to painful histories, and images of power and control to speak to collective memory and immortalize the past. As much as museums, libraries, and other repositories officially serve to document the past, many other ways of recording history—from ephemeral chronicles to spoken word, for example—present themselves in “Unofficial Archives.” By documenting injustices, repression, and state violence through individual experience, the work in “Counter Histories” stands against official narratives, as artists aim to set the record straight.

Over several planned rotations, the installation brings together more than 70 artists and 140 artworks. Longtime highlights of the collection by artists such as Mark Bradford, Jeffrey Gibson, Mona Hatoum, Jasper Johns, Alice Neel, Kiki Smith, and Andy Warhol are placed in dialogue with emerging practices and fresh acquisitions by Dana Chandler Jr., Sharon Hayes, Steve Locke, Laurel Nakadate, Tammy Nguyen, and Avery Singer.