The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is presenting “Maverick Kings: Three Visionary Pharaohs of Egypt’s Golden Age,” on view September 6 through December 6, 2026, in the Ann and Graham Gund Gallery.
The exhibition gathers nearly 100 objects drawn from the MFA’s renowned ancient Egyptian collection — one of the largest in the world — alongside eight loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Kimbell Art Museum.
Through dramatic art and their own words, the show explores the reigns of Hatshepsut, Amenhotep III, and Akhenaten, three 18th-Dynasty rulers who used the power of images to forge their legacies. Hatshepsut was one of the few women to attain supreme power; Amenhotep III ruled at Egypt’s height of prosperity; and Akhenaten shook religious norms with his worship of the sun deity.
Curated by Lawrence Berman and called “a revelation” by The Boston Globe, the exhibition is accompanied by related lectures, including the ongoing series “What Makes a Maverick King?”
Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
