MFA Boston is latest museum to shed its art school

Are museum-run art schools becoming extinct? One of the few remaining schools affiliated with a major museum, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA), is due to merge with the city’s Tufts University on 30 June. Tufts will run the 140-year-old school, which boasts alumni including Cy Twombly and Ellsworth Kelly, while the museum will retain ownership of its buildings. The partnership is a “bold proposition”, says Christopher Bratton, the president of the SMFA, which has suffered from low enrollment numbers and a lack of full accreditation.