Gen. Charles Loring becomes the first curator of the Museum of Fine Arts.

He is named the first director in April 1887. Loring is succeeded by Edward Robinson (1902), Arthur Fairbanks (1907), Edward Holmes (1925), George Edgell (1934), Perry Rathbone (1955), Merrill Rueppel (1973), Jan Fontein (1975), Alan Shestack (1987), Malcolm Rogers (1994), Matthew Teitelbaum (2015), and Pierre Terjanian (2025).