Isabella's Courtyard
Saturday, February 01, 2025
When in Boston, a revisit to the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum is in order. The wealthy Gardener was a voracious collector of art, and many other what-nots, with decidedly eccentric ideas about how to display her masterpieces, and many other what-nots.
She installed them in what might tactfully be described as her own peculiar “curatorial style" in her custom-built museum home cum Venetian Palazzo. Personally I’ve always found the museum itself more a Victorian funhouse and monument to herself despite the incredible collection of masterpieces she amassed.
Unfortunately Gardner petrified her odd vision in her will and the overall atmosphere is often dark or dingy in most of her cluttered salons and corridors. Much of the art seems to cower on the walls of her salons or is cornered into strange clusters. There’s no way, of course, to actually use her roped-off chairs and settees and fake-desk tableaux to sit and ponder the often amazing works displayed. I’ve often wondered if the infamous and unsolved theft of thirteen paintings wasn’t just a desperate vigilante attempt to free them from their corseted confines.
The courtyard of her creation is a breath of fresh air, though, even if it’s also frustratingly roped off from use.
She installed them in what might tactfully be described as her own peculiar “curatorial style" in her custom-built museum home cum Venetian Palazzo. Personally I’ve always found the museum itself more a Victorian funhouse and monument to herself despite the incredible collection of masterpieces she amassed.
Unfortunately Gardner petrified her odd vision in her will and the overall atmosphere is often dark or dingy in most of her cluttered salons and corridors. Much of the art seems to cower on the walls of her salons or is cornered into strange clusters. There’s no way, of course, to actually use her roped-off chairs and settees and fake-desk tableaux to sit and ponder the often amazing works displayed. I’ve often wondered if the infamous and unsolved theft of thirteen paintings wasn’t just a desperate vigilante attempt to free them from their corseted confines.
The courtyard of her creation is a breath of fresh air, though, even if it’s also frustratingly roped off from use.
