FINE ARTS, MUSEUM OF

also called Boston Museum Of Fine Arts, cultural centre in Boston, Mass., U.S., whose balanced collections have made it one of the world's most comprehensive art museums. The museum was founded in 1870 with the art holdings of the Boston Athenaeum library as the nucleus of its collection. The Museum of Fine Arts has a major collection of Asian art dating from the 3rd millennium BC to modern times. It also has the largest collection outside France of paintings by Claude Monet, the world's foremost collection of 19th-century American art, and one of the world's finest collections of Egyptian Old Kingdom objects. The museum moved to its present location on The Fenway in 1909. A new West Wing designed by I.M. Pei was opened in 1981. Spanish Museo De Bellas Artes, museum in Caracas, Venez., containing a variety of international and Venezuelan art, and also possessing fine gardens. It adjoins the Gallery of National Art (Galera de Arte Nacional), one of the few museums in South America founded to show the national cultural identity of the country; opened in 1976, the gallery contains works by more than 40 Venezuelan painters in the contemporary- and popular-arts sections. Oriental ceramics and carvings of wood and marble, among other exhibits, are in the Museum of Fine Arts, which also contains a representative collection of European art.