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Modern Love

An invitation-only "Modern Renaissance" museum

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ou’ll need a reservation to make it past the elaborately painted gates of the Museum of the Modern Renaissance. The museum is the brainchild of Russian expats Katrina Sorokina and Nicholas Shaplyko, who not only own and live in the museum, but also created all of the artwork themselves. Their artwork is intensely colorful and features abstract shapes juxtaposed with religious and mythical imagery. Inside a former Masonic temple (“We’re going to keep this a temple—a temple of art,” Shaplyko assured the Masons when closing on the place) with a façade that brings to mind an Incan ruin, the museum houses hundreds of enormous paintings and sculptures. And while its website readily admits that “Modern Renaissance” is not to be found in any encyclopedia of art, Sorokina and Shaplyko define the term as art that creates positive energy and “helps you open a window inside yourself.” Duffy

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The other Masonic hall in Somerville, King Solomon’s Lodge, was opened in 1783 and is one of the oldest in America.