For many members of the Boston College community, December always feels like a short and somewhat hectic month as we all race towards our well-deserved winter break. Although the “Beyond Words” exhibitions comes to a close on Sunday, December 11, the McMullen Museum of Art is kicking off the holiday season a day earlier on Saturday, December 10 with two unique holiday-themed Second Saturdays events!
Second Saturdays: Holiday Celebration (12/10/16, 12-5pm)
In conjunction with Boston College’s Alumni Winter Wonderland on December 10, the McMullen will offer holiday-themed vocal performances by The Madrigal Singers at 12:30 p.m. and by the Dynamics at 3:00 p.m. while visitors sip hot chocolate and eat holiday treats, tour the exhibition, and participate in arts and crafts activities throughout the afternoon. This event is free and open to the public.
Second Saturdays: Identifying Animals in Medieval Manuscripts (12/10/16, 2:30-4:30pm) (Ages 4–9)
The McMullen invites children age four to nine to explore the numerous animals found throughout the exhibition’s medieval manuscript pages. Children will be asked to find and name animals in a series of objects, including deer, owls, rabbits, and more. Children will practice spelling the names of these animals and will be asked to identify various characteristics of each animal, offering an opportunity to expand children’s vocabularies and means of recognizing animals in works of art.
After their tour through the museum, children may choose to color a series of manuscript coloring book pages with animals in them, using a variety of pens, pencils, and markers. Because seats are limited, participants must register with the museum prior to the event at http://bit.ly/29V4yWx.
All of this information and more can be found on the museum’s main events page (http://www.bc.edu/sites/artmuseum/about/events.html). If you can make it, we’d love to see you on December 10! From all us at the Terrace, we wish you a happy, healthy, not-too-hectic month of December!
The beautifully illuminated Beauvais Missal—created in the thirteenth century and dismembered in the twentieth—is one of the best-known victims of mid-twentieth-century American “biblioclasm,” serving as a perfect example of just how great a loss is incurred when a codex is dismembered and its leaves scattered. It also serves as a hopeful case study of the possibilities offered by recent developments in imaging and metadata standards, platforms, and interoperability. 
In this lecture, given at the Preview Opening, Director of the McMullen Museum Nancy Netzer discusses the history of the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston Collection and the many decisions that went into planning and building its new facility at 2101 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02135.
