An expert on 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-century portraiture, he has published on painting in England in the 17th century, notably on Anthony van Dyck and William Dobson, as well as on portrait photography, and London and its museums.
[2] In 1995, as a gesture of welcome to the community upon the museum's 125th anniversary, Rogers reopened the Huntington Avenue doors, the original front entrance, closed in 1991 for financial reasons.
Rogers also instituted a series of free community days, cultural celebrations, and education programs, which allowed the MFA to welcome more than one million visitors annually.
His initiatives reflected his philosophy of "opening doors" and making the museum accessible to all, a decision described by Geoff Edgers of The Boston Globe as "a step toward rejuvenating the MFA.
[7] In 2002, the museum released its Diversity Action Plan, prepared by Riscoe & Associates of Philadelphia, outlining steps to ensure the MFA is a trusted institution in which all Bostonians are stakeholders, and which truly represented the face of contemporary society.
[10] In addition to the wing and courtyard, the expansion included a new gallery for rotating exhibitions, a visitor center, an auditorium, educational spaces, and conservation labs.
[15] Throughout his directorship Rogers pursued expansion of the museum's collections, with renewed emphasis on Native American, Pre-Columbian, and African art.
[17] They range from the colossal imperial Roman statue of Juno to classic paintings by Edgar Degas, Gustave Caillebotte, Franz Xaver Winterhalter, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard to major twentieth-century and contemporary pieces by Piet Mondrian, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Joseph Beuys, Bridget Riley, Robert Mangold, Jim Dine, Takashi Murakami, Kara Walker, Tara Donovan, Kehinde Wiley, Mona Hatoum, and Anish Kapoor.
In Rogers’ time, the museum held more than 375 exhibitions (often accompanied by scholarly catalogues), including Tales from Land of Dragons: 1000 Years of Chinese Paintings (1997), Monet in the 20th Century (1998), An Adventure with Wallace & Gromit (1998), Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen (1999), Rembrandt's Journey: Painter, Draftsman, Etcher (2003), Americans in Paris (2006), Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice (2009), Degas and the Nude (2011), and Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer (2015).
In a 2004 interview, he stated, "I wanted this institution to feel the power and joy of change... And that we had to do it as one museum, that we couldn’t do this as a collection of departments and special interests.
Some of his exhibitions, mounted with a view to broadening the museum's audience and shedding its elitist image, and which proved very popular with the public, attracted indignation in some areas: notably Herb Ritts: Work (1996), a retrospective of the Hollywood fashion and celebrity photographer, whom Rogers saw as a brilliant image-maker evoking a world without boundaries of class and sexuality; Dangerous Curves: The Art of the Guitar (2000), featuring guitars from the sixteenth century to those of contemporary rock stars; Speed, Style and Beauty: Cars from the Ralph Lauren Collection (2005), showcasing the famous American fashion designer's collection of luxury cars renowned for their remarkable design quality; and Things I Love: The Many Collections of William I. Koch (2005), displaying choice objects from Koch's many collections—from ancient Roman to contemporary American, including the contentious decision to exhibit two America's Cup yachts on the Huntington Avenue lawn.
[20] The distinguished scholar of American art, Theodore Stebbins (22 years tenure), resigned after serving for a short time as the first chair of the new Americas department.
In response, the MFA conducted extensive provenance research on antiquities and European art in its collection, and the museum reached numerous ownership resolutions with Holocaust victims and foreign nations.
Despite arguments with Guatemala in the late ’90s,[22] the vast majority of repatriation inquiries resulted in mutually agreed conclusions with estates/heirs and countries, including Italy, Turkey, and Nigeria,[23] as well as the resolution of Holocaust claims whenever justified.
[17] The house was owned by Francis Davis Millet, a Founder of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1870, who was offered but rejected the directorship of the MFA in 1906.