The MFA Boston presented a dedicated solo exhibition of Jones's work, marking her as the first African American artist with a solo show at that institution.
On February 14, 1973, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston presented a dedicated solo exhibition of Lois Mailou Jones's work, an event later documented in biographical accounts as making her the first African American artist to have a solo exhibition at the MFA Boston specifically, distinct from the broader claim regarding her 1972 retrospective's status as the first for an African American woman at any American museum.
This exhibition built upon the momentum of her celebrated 1972 retrospective, further cementing her relationship with the museum where she had once been a student decades earlier. The recognition by one of America's most prestigious art institutions was a powerful statement about the changing, if still slow-moving, landscape of racial inclusion in American museum culture during the early 1970s.
Jones's persistence in exhibiting her work despite decades of exclusionary practices in the art world made her exhibitions at the MFA Boston into powerful symbols of overdue institutional recognition. Her paintings on display spanned her stylistic evolution, including her vibrant Haitian and African-themed works that had come to define her mature artistic voice.
The distinction between her 1972 and 1973 MFA Boston exhibitions reflects the layered, sometimes overlapping nature of her many 'firsts,' each representing a different facet of the barriers she broke as a Black woman navigating and ultimately transforming twentieth-century American art institutions.