With coaxing, a beloved mother comes to town

For three years, they hinted, nudged, and asked whether the painting might come to Boston. And by refusing to stop pushing, the leaders of the Museum of Fine Arts got a French museum to agree to loan the iconic artwork ``Whistler's Mother," which next week will be shown locally for the first time in 23 years.

Such give-and-take happens often when major institutions are organizing blockbuster shows. Still, in a climate where brand-name artists and paintings attract crowds, negotiations are complex and the stakes are high.

When it came to ``Whistler's Mother"-- a painting so famous it has been featured on postage stamps, films, and in television shows -- the MFA had to persuade the Musée d'Orsay, which owns the painting, to loan a work that's considered central to its collection.

Born in Lowell, James McNeill Whistler spent much of his life in England and France. The severe oil portrait, titled ``Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1: Portrait of the Artist's Mother," was painted in London in 1871 but was shown in Paris and bought by the government for the French National Museum. That made it important for the planned exhibition ``Americans in Paris 1860-1900," which the MFA was co-organizing with London's National Gallery.

To make that point, curators at the MFA and National Gallery traveled to Paris to demonstrate how badly they wanted the Whistler.

``It is such an icon," said MFA Director Malcolm Rogers. ``It would have been heartbreaking if we couldn't have gotten it."

The MFA had scored such a loan before, to considerable fanfare. Back in 1934, the first time the painting was shown in Boston, a platoon of police officers on motorcycle chaperoned ``Whistler's Mother" to the MFA. According to reports, the museum insured the painting for $1 million. On a Sunday in May, 11,000 people lined up to see the portrait.

This time , the MFA kept the arrangements surrounding the painting's arrival last Thursday under wraps. Museum officials declined to allow the press -- or any outsiders -- to watch workers haul the crate containing ``Whistler's Mother" into the building.

Officials wouldn't discuss how it was transported from Europe, or reveal anything about the way the painting, which art appraisers estimate is worth at least $30 million, has been insured for this trip.

But the museum did unveil some details about the negotiations that went into borrowing a painting of its stature.

The process started almost three years ago, when Rogers mentioned the ``Americans in Paris" exhibit to Musée d'Orsay director Serge Lemoine in Paris. He indicated to his French counterpart that the MFA would probably ask the museum to lend several works, including ``Whistler's Mother."

Unlike other complicated loans, there was no offer of a picture-for-picture trade. But Rogers says the MFA's willingness to cooperate with other leading venues was clear that day.

After all, its own masterpiece, Paul Gauguin's 12-foot-long ``Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" was put on display at the Grand Palais in Paris. That marked the first time in more than a half century it had left the MFA.

Four months later, in January, 2004, MFA curators George T. M. Shackelford and Erica Hirshler, along with two National Gallery curators, went to Paris to make the request.

When Lemoine wrote back to the MFA and National Gallery, he didn't mention ``Whistler's Mother."

``We said, `Uh-oh,' " says Hirshler. ``But I never give up. We chose to pursue it. Again. Remember, we didn't get a no."

The curators headed back to Paris in May 2005, telling Lemoine more about the exhibition. This time, they detected he was leaning toward loaning ``Whistler's Mother." In June, Lemoine confirmed their hunch. ``Whistler's Mother" could now join the other 100 works in the sprawling exhibition, which also includes loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery, and more than a dozen other institutions.

Graham W. J. Beal, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, which borrowed the painting in 2004 for its exhibit, ``American Attitude: Whistler and His Followers," said the MFA's approach paid off.

``More and more, with exhibitions that are drawing upon iconic works, if a loan is very, very important, then you really need the potential lender to be approached in person," said Beal.

In addition, Beal, though he wasn't required to, decided to take special care with ``Whistler's Mother." Instead of merely having a guard on duty in the room with the painting -- standard procedure -- he assigned a special guard for the picture itself.

``You do have these incredible anxieties," said Beal. ``We've asked for this incredible work of art. If something were to happen here, how embarrassing it would be."

The MFA won't have an individual guard for the painting, but it will use video surveillance and a number of alarm systems to protect the work and the others in the exhibition. The MFA is paying for the painting's transportation and insurance, according to Hirshler.

The museum declined to discuss transportation and insurance costs, but the owner of an art insurance company in California estimated that if the painting were valued at $30 million, it would probably cost about $6,000 a month to insure it in the museum, and $20,000 to insure it when it was being moved to and from the building.

``It is priceless," said Tom Pratt of Thomson & Pratt Insurance Associates Inc. in Los Angeles, ``but at least there is some form of compensation for it if it were injured."

``Whistler's Mother" hangs in a gallery between paintings by Cecilia Beaux and William Merritt Chase and faces Whistler's ``Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl." Even before its opening, ``Americans in Paris" has already garnered international attention, including a full-page feature in this month's Vanity Fair.

And the MFA will be the only American venue for the painting.

When the show travels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in October, the exhibit will no longer include ``Whistler's Mother" because it had been previously committed to an exhibition in Kobe, Japan. The painting was part of the show at the National Gallery earlier this year. The MFA has high hopes for ``Americans in Paris." The last time ``Whistler's Mother" appeared in Boston, in a 1983 show, 264,640 visitors attended , making it among the top 10 attended exhibitions in museum history.

``In those days, we didn't do the same kind of audience research we do now," remembers MFA curator Carol Troyen, who worked on the 1983 exhibition. ``But the exhibit galleries were always crowded. There was a special crowd around that picture almost all the time."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.