Date night was my turn this week, and I decided to take us to the MFA for some edification. We had a delicious dinner at Brown Sugar Cafe back in the Fenway behind my old place, and then trudged through the berms to the MFA, open until 10 pm on Fridays. We enjoyed the permanent collection, some Czech photographs, and some interesting paintings, almost all to ourselves. The main visiting shows were works by Cerith Wyn Evans (it looks better in the White Cube Gallery in London) and Damien Hirst.



Wyn Evans’ main piece, “Look at that picture?How does it appear to you now? Does it seem to be Persisting?” consisted of a series of chandeliers in a large room. Each chandelier was blinking dots and dashes spelling out a sentence or passage in Morse code, while the code and the words could be read on a monitor on the wall near the lamp. Interesting, but only marginally so, I thought.



The selection of Hirst’s work was pretty small, and I’d seen the lamb, the pharmacy, and the color dot work before. The chamber with the animatronic lepidopterist (is that the right word?) and the butterflies flying around was intriguing, and the canvas encrusted with millions (billions?) of flies was worth getting close to.

I think my favorite item was a carousel pig from the permanent collection, circa 1905.