Sunlight shines through a large glass roof, bathing the courtyard's Roman mosaic floor, and elegant vines of orange flowers cascade from the third floor balconies down to the ground level. Statuary abounds amongst palm trees and lush greenery, and the delicate trickle of a fountain can be heard in the distance. While this may sound like a description of a grand European mansion, it is, in fact, of the central courtyard of a palazzo located just off of Boston's Green Line. With its outstanding collection, unique arrangement and legendary founder, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an institution unlike any other. "A millionaire Bohemienne"
Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) developed a deep love for culture and art primarily through her travels. She visited locales including France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Japan, Cambodia and Indonesia, and these voyages eventually inspired her to open a museum in Boston to share the magnificent artistic treasures that she amassed during her travels.
When she wasn't visiting foreign countries, Gardner was an avid supporter of the local arts, a loyal Red Sox fan and an overall legendary Bostonian. According to Hilliard Goldfarb's book "The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum" (1995), "An anonymous local reporter" wrote in 1875 that "Mrs. Jack Gardner is one of the seven wonders of Boston ... She is a millionaire Bohemienne."
Jennifer DePrizio, the director of visitor learning at the Gardner Museum, told the Daily, "The thing that I find most interesting and engaging about her is that you can't quite pigeonhole her ... She really had such a well-rounded idea of what the arts were .... [and] this amazing circle of friends that included writers like Henry James ... [and] painters like John Singer Sargent."
Following the death of her husband, Gardner moved forward with their plan to construct a museum. During the construction process, "She really was a hands-on ... micromanager of the building process," DePrizio said. "She would ... bring her lunch pail ... to the work site and watch over the workmen and tell them how to put the columns exactly where she wanted them."
After the structure was completed, DePrizio said Gardner "spent ... 18 months installing the entire collection, putting every object where it is." She then sold her home on Beacon Street and moved into the 4th floor of the Museum.
Gardner's legacy lived on after her death in 1924, as her will provided an endowment enabling the museum to continue to promote education about the arts. Additionally, the will specified that no item in the museum would be moved and that the collection would not be changed in any way either through acquisitions or sales. A palazzo on the Fenway
The Gardner Museum, located behind the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, resembles a Venetian palace and is organized around a magnificent, covered courtyard with abundant landscaping, columns, reliefs and decorations. On the first three floors of the building, themed galleries, individually decorated and fully furnished, surround the courtyard.
The ground-floor galleries include the Yellow, Blue and Macknight Rooms as well as the Spanish Cloister and Chinese Loggia. This floor is also home to the museum's special exhibition space through which new shows routinely rotate. While the ground floor's rooms display wonderful artwork, including paintings by Edouard Manet, Henri Matisse and James McNeill Whistler, its most dramatic space by far is the courtyard, which is an appropriate introduction to the museum's upper floors.
The second floor is home to the Early Italian, Raphael, Tapestry and Dutch Rooms as well as the Short Gallery and the Little Salon. It is here that viewers can begin to understand the way that Gardner laid out the museum, particularly in the Raphael Room.
The Raphael Room is lit by elegant and unique light fixtures. Its walls are covered in a rich, red fabric. As its name would suggest, it is home to several paintings by Raphael, but many other objects are also displayed in this room, including Sandro Botticelli's dramatic "The Tragedy of Lucretia" (1500-1501).
According to DePrizio, "this painting ... was done for a marriage context and then right below it ... [Gardner placed] a cassone, which is a wedding chest. So you have ... a piece of furniture that was related to a wedding context sitting below a painting that comes from a similar type of context." In this way, DePrizio said, "you get a sense of ... how, in an Italian Renaissance home, these objects would have functioned together."
This unique sense of organization extends to all rooms in the museum, allowing visitors to see, as DePrizio put it, "works of art in a context. And, even though it's not their original context, you get a sense that works of art were meant to be things that were lived with, whether they were in a church or in someone's home, as opposed to the way most modern museums are ... painting[s] on a white wall."
In the Raphael Room, as in most of the museum, there are few, if any, labels next to the paintings. This was Gardner's intent, and requires an adjustment for the visitor that is used to traditional museums with clearly labeled art. Indeed, in the Gardner Museum, DePrizio said, "you're not going to go from painting to label to painting to label because the labels aren't there. So you have to think about it in a different way."
To that end, DePrizio said the museum encourages all visitors to experience the art and the museum in a holistic way. The setup further encourages this type of interaction. "If you find a painting that sort of catches your eye or you're sort of drawn into, don't just look at the painting, but look at all the other things around it and try to make connections for yourself," she said.
The third floor of the museum continues the themes established on the first two floors, and includes the Veronese, Titian and Gothic Rooms as well as the Long Gallery and the chapel. One of the floor's highlights is Veronese's spectacular "The Coronation of Hebe" (1580s). This painting, which is on the ceiling of the Veronese Room, depicts a mythological coronation and demonstrates Veronese's extraordinary skill in painting fabrics and perspective. In addition, it is set within elaborate ceiling moldings that increase its drama.
Other highlights on the floor include Titian's famed "Europa" (1560-62) and the dimly lit chapel, which further allows visitors to view art in the context for which it was created. A famous theft
According to the museum's Web site, "In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, thieves dressed as Boston police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum ... and stole 13 works of art." The items stolen included works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet and Degas. The works have yet to be recovered and this remains one of the most significant unsolved art thefts in history.
DePrizio said "the museum ... still actively pursues the return of ... [the works] in collaboration with the FBI," and the museum's website indicated that a $5 million reward is "offered for information leading to the return of the works of art in good condition."
Empty frames hang in place of several of the stolen works, and according to DePrizio, "they ... remind people of this terrible loss." But, she said, the museum is "hopeful ... [that] the paintings will be returned to us." She added that while the museum continues an active search for these important works, "we try to not focus on those 13 things that were stolen but the 2,000 things that we sill have on view." Gardner's vision in the 21st century
While the museum's collection and layout remain exactly as Gardner arranged them, the institution is by no means stagnant. Rather, the museum makes regular efforts to remain vibrant, alive and ever-changing. DePrizio said that the museum achieves this in three ways: a music program, a contemporary art program and a frequently varying landscape display in the museum's spectacular courtyard.
According to DePrizio, Gardner "loved having music concerts here in her lifetime and then we continue that ... so we have concerts almost every Sunday from the fall through the spring." The museum also has an after-hours program every third Thursday of the month in which it becomes a venue for groundbreaking compositions. DePrizio considered this a continuation of Gardner's legacy because "she really supported what was happening in her time. So what might be a little outrageous and contemporary today ... follow[s] in that legacy."
The museum also maintains an artist-in-residence program in which artists live in the museum, draw inspiration from their surroundings and often create exhibitions. In regards to the artist-in-residence exhibitions, DePrizio said that they "are exciting because we often ... don't have all the details of what they'll be before they get put up ... [in terms of] how the artists were inspired or what they sort of drew out of the museum when they were living here."
Finally, the museum's courtyard is changed regularly, with multiple landscape displays each year. DePrizio described April's special display and explained how the garden allows returning visitors to view the museum in a new way. She said that there "will be 20-to-30-foot vines hanging from the third floor balconies with bright orange, nasturtium flowers ... They're always there in April in honor of [Gardner's] birthday, so you sort of get to see the place anew."
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum houses the personal collection of one of the most interesting figures in the art history world and it remains today exactly as she designed it. The museum is far from inactive, however, and makes many efforts to engage the community (including Tufts students, who are admitted to the museum for free) so that it can continue to be a vibrant part of the city of Boston.
