The original Gothic Revival museum in Copley Square, designed by John Hubbard Sturgis and Charles Brigham, was demolished after the museum moved out in 1909. The present building on Huntington Avenue, credited to Guy Lowell, was planned in 1907 to be built in stages. The first section, finished in 1909, is a neoclassical design with a 500-foot (150 m) granite facade and a grand rotunda.
The painting galleries wing opened in 1915. John Singer Sargent painted the rotunda and colonnade frescoes from 1916 to 1925. I. M. Pei designed the West Wing, now the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, which opened in 1981.
Foster and Partners designed the Art of the Americas Wing with Childs Bertman Tseckares Architects. It opened on November 20, 2010, and its glass-enclosed courtyard covers 12,000 square feet (1,100 m²). The wing won the Harleston Parker Medal in 2014.
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