EGB

EGB was associated with the MFA for her entire life, and almost the MFA's entire life at its permanent location in the Fenway. EGB was born in 1913, just four years after the museum moved to its home on Huntington Avenue. As a child, she rode the streetcar- alone- to take classes at the School of the MFA, focusing mainly on drawing. Reportedly, she once met Jackson Pollock and described him as pathetically sad, but this is unconfirmed, a mystery meeting about which we will never know the truth.In the 1930s, EGB's father, master furniture maker GJG, was commissioned to create replicas of the QH collection, unearthed by renown archaeologist George Reisner, who led the MFA/Harvard University excavations in Giza, Egypt from 1905-1943. QH's tomb was unearthed in 1927, with the mess of decayed wood sent to Boston for GJG to work his magic upon. Using only ancient materials and methods, G's reproductions of QH's bedroom set and carrying ____ were the showpiece of the MFA's Egyptian Wing for decades, culminating with its Centennial Rededication in 2003.EGB continued to be connected with the MFA for the rest of her long life, visiting many times as a member, and always referring to it as “The” Museum. She led art classes for BUWA/BUNWC/BNC--her notebooks could fill pages and pages of biography of artists ranging from the Masters to the Modernists (whom she did not care for). While EGB, too, painted, mainly in watercolors, she would continue her first love, of drawing, until her hands failed her at the end of her nearly 99 years of life.