25 Evans Way
Boston, MA 02115
Phone: 617-566-1401
www.gardnermuseum.org
“. . . I decided that the greatest need in our Country was art . . . we were a very young country and had very few opportunities of seeing beautiful things, works of art . . . So I determined to make it my life’s work if I could.”
— ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER
For a bit of Venice (and a lot of Europe) in Boston, visit the Gardner Museum. Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) was an heiress, philanthropist, patron of the arts, and avid art collector. When she came into her inheritance upon her father’s death in 1891, she began to work with art historian and collector Bernard Berenson (1865–1959) to acquire dozens of Old Master paintings. In 1898 she bought this property and hired architect Willard T. Sears (1837–1920) to create a Venetian palace to be both her home and her museum. Its model and inspiration was the Palazzo Barbaro. Built in 1425, the Venetian Gothic palace on the Grand Canal had become the nucleus of the Barbaro Circle: a group of American artists and patrons that included Gardner, Berenson, James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Edith Wharton, Henry James, and others. They would be very much at home here at Fenway Court, as Mrs. Gardner named her palazzo.
The three-story house and museum are built around a central garden courtyard, which is protected by a glass roof. All year round, the garden is abloom with changing floral displays. Mrs. Jack (as Mrs. Gardner was often called) toured Europe and collected ancient architectural fittings, sculptures, columns, and capitals to be incorporated into her museum. She personally chose the more than 2,500 artworks in her collection: paintings, sculptures, furniture, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, books, ceramics, silver, fabrics, and letters. The collection reached as far back as ancient times and spanned Europe, Asia, the Islamic world, and contemporary America. Artists represented include Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, Sargent, Whistler, Degas, and Manet. Isabella herself arranged the display of everything in her museum. It was opened to the public on New Year’s Day 1903 to the sounds of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
When Mrs. Gardner died in 1924, she left her museum and a $1 million endowment “for the education and enjoyment of the public forever.” In accordance with her wishes, an Anglican Mass is sung for the repose of her soul annually in Fenway Court’s chapel. She also stipulated that were any part of her museum to be changed in any way, it and its contents are to be sold and the proceeds given to Harvard University.
A grim chapter in the history of Fenway Court occurred the night of March 18, 1990 when two men disguised as police officers broke into the museum and stole thirteen works of art. The total value of these is $500 million—the costliest property theft ever to occur anywhere in the world. To date, the case has not been solved nor the works recovered. Empty picture frames hang on the walls where the paintings once were.
In 2012, a new wing was added to the Gardner Museum, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano (b. 1937). It stands on the site of the former stables and includes a new entrance, visitor center, restaurant, shop, reading room, concert hall, and space for special exhibits and programs. Strikingly modern, the cost of construction was $118 million. From here visitors reach the palazzo by way of a long corridor that may be thought of as a time tunnel, linking the twenty-first century to the fifteenth.