When you read all of those brochures and college-ranking books last year, you were told over and over again that Tufts is in the best location: tucked away in a suburban neighborhood, but close enough to a city so that it's not isolated.
With one short T ride, you can find yourself in the heart of Boston, a cultural center for music, history and art. If you're from out of town, being in a city with so much to offer can be daunting, so here's a short guide to the (free) art world both inside and beyond Tufts' walls.
Before even leaving campus, you can find a beautiful gallery right down the hill. The Tufts University Art Gallery showcases an impressive array of artwork throughout the year, hanging the work of well-known artists (such as Edward Burtynsky's "The China Series" just last semester) and student work on the same walls.
Each year, the Tisch and Koppelman Galleries are filled with four curated exhibitions and one juried summer exhibition. This fall, the galleries will be transformed into "The Center of Cosmic Energy," a vision of the internationally renowned artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. The installation, on display from Sept. 6 to Nov. 11, will take the form of a scientific experiment attempting to employ seemingly inexplicable forces of the cosmos to find greater potential for humankind.
When they aren't being reconstructed into cosmic-energy-collectors, the Tisch and Koppelman Galleries are also sites for four Museum of Fine Arts thesis exhibitions and one Museum Studies Program exhibition each year, displaying engaging group shows of student work, which offer their contemporary, innovative work a space to be seen.
The Remis Sculpture Court hosts three exhibitions each year and will host the "Global Village Shelters" show from Sept. 6 to Dec. 23, an exhibit of temporary homes that can be constructed without tools for those in need of urgent protection from natural threats. The Slater Concourse Gallery, located in the hallway on the way into the Tisch and Koppelman Galleries, offers a space that can be curated by any member of the Tufts community.
While the Tufts galleries may be a great resource to have on campus, Boston and Cambridge are not much farther away and offer some of the best art collections in the world. Take the Green Line's E train to the Museum stop and wander around the Museum of Fine Arts for a few hours. Make sure to bring your ID with you; Tufts students get in for free, since Tufts is affiliated with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, just across the street.
Boasting one of the most comprehensive collections in the world, including 450,000 works, the museum warrants more than one trip, but make sure to see the American and Impressionist works, as well as the African and Asian collections.
A bit closer to Tufts are the Harvard art museums, including the Fogg, Sackler and Busch-Reisinger Museums, all of which are also free with Tufts ID. The Fogg is the oldest of the three, a beautiful building based on a 16th-century fa?§ade in Montepulciano, Italy. Visitors can stroll past one of the nation's most distinguished Impressionist and post-Impressionist collections in the museum's courtyard, as well as an outstanding collection of Picasso works.
From inside the Fogg you can enter the Busch-Reisinger Museum, which is devoted to Central and Northern European art, including a remarkable collection of German expressionist works, as well as abstract works from the 1920s and Bauhaus objects. Both the Fogg and the Busch-Reisinger have a series of excellent curated shows each year, often relating to the focus of their permanent collections.
The Sackler, across the street from the Fogg, is in a different vein. It showcases ancient, Islamic, Asian and later Indian works, as well as the world's finest collections of archaic Chinese jades and Japanese surimono, a kind of woodblock print.
Make sure to take the 10-minute trip on the Red Line to Harvard and visit these three impressive collections, as well as the upcoming "Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity" at the Sackler, and the contemporary art exhibition at the Fogg in September.
These major museums are but a few of many in Boston, and the opportunities for exploring the city's art world are far more extensive, including the many galleries on Newbury Street, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and even the Museum of Bad Art.
These are just a few vital places to visit as you begin your years at Tufts, and find that getting away from campus for a day of museum-going can be refreshing, if not a justifiable form of procrastination.
