Craft has an exciting, high-profile presence in the new Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, opening September 18 to the general public at the venerable Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Housed in a 1981 building designed by I.M. Pei, the wing has seven galleries presenting more than 200 works in all disciplines from the museum's collections of art.

"It's an integrated installation that is contemporary truly across media," says Emily Zilber, the MFA's Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick curator of contemporary decorative arts. The mix highlights abstract expressionism, for example, by showing a Peter Voulkos stack pot next to a Jackson Pollock painting.

But there's also a permanent space just for craft: the nearly 1,800-square-foot Daphne and Peter Farago Gallery, where an inaugural display features 90 masterworks of modern and contemporary craft and design.

"We want to get people thinking about contemporary art in an inquisitive way," Zilber says. "The same questions you'd ask about a painting, you'll ask about jewelry."
Speaking of jewelry, MFA also recently unveiled, in another building, the Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Family Foundation Gallery, a showcase for its extensive jewelry trove. The kickoff exhibition, "Jewels, Gems, and Treasures: Ancient to Modern" (through Nov. 25, 2012), brings the bling with dazzling creations in rare stones and precious metals, but also offers surprises: 19th century ornaments that use stuffed hummingbirds, fabulous faux creations by designers such as Kenneth Jay Lane, a conceptual "diamond" ring of copper wire by Dutch artist Liesbeth Fit.

Yvonne Markowitz, the Rita J. Kaplan and Susan B. Kaplan curator of jewelry, says the show "comes full circle, looking at the kinds of materials prized over time," from the earliest uses of shell, wood, and ivory, to the modern role of jewelry as luxury status symbol, to today's cutting-edge explorations in unlikely materials "that question what we regard as precious."

Joyce Lovelace is American Craft's contributing editor.