West Wing, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art)

Since 1909 the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has occupied a Beaux-Arts building by Guy Lowell on Huntington Avenue. The West Wing, entrusted to I. M. Pei, opened in July 1981, bringing together restaurants, shops, an auditorium and a large gallery for special exhibitions. The works, which cost 22 million dollars, created or refurbished 160,000 square feet (nearly 14,900 m²), half new and half refurbished, and air-conditioned the old building.

The new climate-control system depended on the completion of the West Wing: the Asiatic Wing, closed in 1978 because the absence of climate control endangered the collection, reopened in 1982.

The success of the wing, with its entrance next to a parking area, and the closing of the Huntington Avenue entrance, from 1990 to April 1995, shifted the museum's centre of gravity. The main entrance is once again the one on Huntington Avenue.

In June 2008 the wing was renamed the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art. It opened in September 2011 with contemporary art, in seven galleries created for the purpose alongside the existing Foster Gallery. A conservation centre of 22,000 square feet (about 2,000 m²) with six laboratories, completed in late 2020, opened to the public there in November 2022.

The wing has three storeys and stretches along Lowell's building. Pei gave up the concrete of the 1970 White Wing and clad his in granite from Deer Isle, Maine, a smooth facade whose lines follow those of the old facade.

Inside, everything starts from light: "Free the daylight" is Pei's phrase for his aim. He uses gridded skylights and barrel-vaulted galleries here, above a three-storey hall whose light fittings are his own design. At the opening, a gallery more than 200 feet (over 60 m) long needed no artificial lighting. The route opens long axial views towards the old museum and glimpses of the greenery of the Fens.

The plan separates the service section (Remis auditorium, restaurants, bookstore) from the rest of the museum so that it can stay open longer.

The wing mainly presents the museum's contemporary art collection, which numbers more than two thousand works; other works hang in galleries elsewhere in the building.

It also houses, across its levels, a coffee and wine bar, a restaurant and a cafeteria, the bookstore and shop in the Druker Family Pavilion, and the museum's conservation centre.

The museum is open from 10 am to 5 pm on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, and from 10 am to 10 pm on Thursday and Friday; it is closed on Tuesday, and the last entry is 30 minutes before closing. It also closes on New Year's Day, Patriots' Day, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Every visitor needs a ticket, whatever their age; buying in advance is recommended. The main entrance is on Huntington Avenue, and the wing is reached through the atrium, inside the museum. Visitors who need a level entrance use the entrance of the Linde Family Wing, on Museum Road, which is reserved for them.