Greene and Greene at MFA

From my review of “New and Native Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene” at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts:

Charles and Henry Greene came to Boston in 1888 to study architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The school was then in the Back Bay, and the brothers rented rooms nearby, close to Henry Hobson Richardson's landmark Arts and Crafts–style Trinity Church and the original Museum of Fine Arts, with its budding collection of Japanese art.

A couple of years after graduation, Charles lost his Boston job in a financial crisis, and they moved West. In 1894, in Pasadena, they launched their architectural firm Greene & Greene. The Museum of Fine Arts' splendid exhibit "New and Native Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene" (through October 18) shows how they pioneered a West Coast design built on the inspirations they brought with them: the elegant minimalism of Asian design and the Arts and Crafts Movement's emphasis on handcraft and a what-you-see-is-what-you-get "honest" use of materials.

Read the rest here.

“New and Native Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene,” Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston, July 14 to October 18, 2009.

Pictured from top to bottom: Greene Greene designs, entry hall bench for the Robert R. Blacker House, 1908–1909, courtesy of American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation, photograph: Gavin Ashworth, © American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation; living room table for the Charles M. Pratt House, 1912, private collection; living room armchair for the Robert R. Blacker House, 1908–1909, courtesy of Sotheby's; hall chair for the William T. Bolton House, 1907, courtesy of Guardian Stewardship, photograph Courtesy of Sotheby's, New York; exterior wall lantern for the Arthur A. Libby House, 1905, private collection, photograph © Ognen Borissov/Interfoto; entry hall window panel for the Jennie A. Reeve House, 1904, private collection, New York, photograph courtesy of Sotheby's, New York; hall lantern for the James Culbertson House, 1910, courtesy of Guardian Stewardship, photograph Courtesy of Sotheby's, New York. All courtesy of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.