Best of Boston

We love underdogs, but lately the MFA has reminded us why it’s the establishment. It has earned its bona fides with shows of trippy hippie fashion, action-packed samurai armor, John Singer Sargent watercolors, and a thematic exploration of the color pink. Its of-the-moment survey of photographs taken by women from Iran and the rest of the Arab world was proof that the august institution does new well, too. After eye-popping 19th-century quilts and a sampler of that sensitive Baroque scoundrel Caravaggio this spring, the Magna Carta, which paved the way for modern democracy, arrived on July 2. The underdogs might wanna get a move on.