Turner’s Modern World, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775–1851) Venice: The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore 1834 | National Gallery of Art, Washington | Photo: Courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Turner’s Modern World brings together more than 100 works by one of Britain’s greatest artists, including paintings, watercolors, drawings and sketchbooks from museums across the U.S. and Great Britain. What made J. M. W. Turner modern—his dedication to timely subjects and new modes of depiction—also makes his art vital to our moment. Many of the themes explored in his dramatic compositions are as urgent today as they were some two centuries ago: abolition and the legacy of slavery, the human cost of war, voting rights and the question of who should govern, new technology and the worker, and industry versus the environment. The crux of this landmark exhibition is the artist’s masterpiece Slave Ship (1840), a stinging indictment of the transatlantic slave trade, only on view at the MFA. Boston is the third and final venue for Turner’s Modern World, following London’s Tate Britain and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, and the only place visitors can see Slave Ship in a thrilling new context.

The exhibition is organized thematically into seven sections.

Turner’s Modern World is on view at the MFA from March 27 through July 10, 2022.

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