What to See, Eat and Do in Boston

There’s a new face welcoming visitors to Boston. It belongs to a 3-year-old in Velcro sneakers, crouching by a boombox and haloed in gold. She’s the artist Rob Gibbs’s daughter, who stares unflinchingly from a soaring 70-foot mural across from South Station, the city’s biggest train terminal.

Mr. Gibbs — who paints under the name ProBlak — is the first Black Boston-native artist to be commissioned for the rotating Dewey Square mural. Mr. Gibbs grew up in Roxbury and has been painting walls in the city for years. This newest mural, “Breathe Life Together,” will be up through May 2023. His art pays homage to under-heard people in Boston, and is a reflection of his neighborhood and home. “If I’m going to welcome people to the city, the best thing I can do is give them a home-cooked meal,” he said. “This is a home-cooked meal.”

It’s a welcome for visitors who are returning to New England’s largest city at near prepandemic levels. Hotel occupancy in June was 81.8 percent — shy of June 2019, when rates were 89.8 percent, but a vast improvement over a pandemic low of 5 percent. And with nonstop flights from 127 domestic and international destinations, travelers are being met with innovative art, new music venues, upscale dining options and reimagined hotels.

Exhibitions and installations

The role of art in fostering conversation has been a focus at the Museum of Fine Arts in recent years. That conversation was thrust onto a national stage when, following the murder of George Floyd and during an ongoing nationwide reckoning with race, its retrospective of Philip Guston, a painter who often explored white supremacy, anti-Semitism and violence in his work, was delayed two years to rethink and reframe its presentation, which includes things like trigger warnings and resources for viewers to prepare themselves emotionally for the show. The postponement outraged many in the art world, but in May, the M.F.A. opened the show, “Philip Guston Now,” which was lauded by many for its thoughtful approach, while others questioned the need for such cautionary features.

The exhibition will close on Sept. 11, a week after the M.F.A. celebrates the opening of the “Obama Portraits Tour” (Sept. 3 through Oct. 30), the final North American stop before the official presidential portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama return to the National Portrait Gallery. Alongside the Obama portraits will be more than 2,600 drawings, paintings and photos from as…