Steve travels for work to Boston several times a year. I tag along as often as possible and with each visit, I grow to enjoy the city more. Every time I go, I try to do something I haven’t on a previous visit. On this occasion, I took in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. What makes it a gem is the combination of its quirky founder and namesake and the fact that it was the site of a $500 million art heist that has never been solved.
Hat tip to Brianne Miers, who is a Boston Based travel blogger over at A Traveling Life. Brianne responded to my call for recommendations for something to do in Boston before a Red Sox game. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (ISG) is an easy 20-minute walk from Fenway Park.
Review: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Isabella Stewart Gardner: The Backstory
I enjoy art galleries and museums, but I’m not an art connoisseur by any stretch. I usually don’t seek out galleries when travelling. However, when I read a bit about the ISG Museum online prior to my visit, I was hooked by the incredible backstory of this fabulous woman and her palace.
Isabella Stewart Gardner was born in 1840 in New York City. Her father was a wealthy linen merchant. This meant she ended up with a lot of disposable cash. After attending finishing school in Paris, she met and married her husband Jack and moved to his hometown of Boston. Jack was part of the established elite in Beantown (so she now had even more access to cash) and Isabella was regarded as a bit of an outsider. Apparently, there was an ongoing cultural tension between New York rich and Boston rich. Anyway, Isabella seems to have thrived on the derision cast her way and from all accounts delighted in people gossiping about her.
Portrait of Isabella
Her gossip-worthy eccentricities included wearing dresses that showed cleavage, hanging out regularly with known and up-and-coming men in the arts, hosting boxing matches at her house, smoking cigarettes, and wearing two large diamonds attached to long wires on top her head. Yeah, people talked.
Isabella and Jack lost their only child to pneumonia when he was two and this sent Isabella into a tailspin of depression. Her doctor apparently recommended travel as the cure (why not?). An extensive tour of Europe began Isabella’s deep love of art and specifically Venice. The couple later travelled even farther afield to Asia, which was a relatively rare tourist destination at the time. Isabella knew no boundaries.
As the couple travelled, they collected art and Isabella began to dream of opening a museum to display it. It wasn’t until Jack’s death in 1898, however, that this dream began to take shape.
The Palace
If you’re very rich, in love with art, and a heartbroken widow what do you do? If you’re Isabella, you build a palace. You create a beautifully airy palazzo in its centre that reminds you of happier times in Venice. In this palace, you house your growing collection of the art and artefacts and then hold a grand opening for a select group and serve Champagne and doughnuts. I love it!
The Collection: Eclectic and Quirky
Isabella stipulated that after her death nothing be changed, moved, or modified in the display of the art. The collection comprises a combination of high art and oddities, which are sometimes displayed in close proximity. Examples are a lock of hair from composer Franz Liszt, a bed tassel belonging to Mary Queen of Scots, and bottles of sand from Egypt. She acquired all kinds of odd stuff. She stipulated that the works have no labels – she wanted people to appreciate the art for what it was without any preconceived ideas.
Walking through this museum is not like walking through an art gallery. It’s more like combing through your eccentric Aunt Maude’s house after she passed away and you can’t ask her what on earth she was thinking when she decided to keep some of this stuff. It’s overly cluttered with valuable items sometimes hidden behind others that are vaguely creepy (such as Liszt’s hair!). The rooms come across as a crazy, grand mishmash. Among Isabella’s more conventional and precious acquisitions are paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Botticelli.
The museum opened a new wing in 2012 to accommodate special exhibitions and a performance space for music and dance. There’s also a lovely outdoor garden.
The Heist
On St. Patrick’s Day in 1990 the museum fell victim to the world’s largest art theft. A pair of thieves disguised themselves as police officers, entered the museum in the early morning, and overpowered one of the guards after convincing him they were there to execute an outstanding warrant for his arrest. In the end, 13 works valued at $500 million were stolen and have never been recovered. Empty frames now hang where the priceless pieces had once been on display.
BuzzFeed’s Unsolved series recently recreated the events of the heist in this somewhat irreverent (and highly engaging) video:
If You Go
Take in the free introductory lecture most days at 12:30 or 2:30. It’s only 20 minutes long and will set the tone for your visit and help you to appreciate your walkthrough. The volunteer that provides the orientation also hangs around the exhibits afterwards for any follow-up questions you may have. I did not opt for the audio guide, but I saw several people using it as well.
Allow about two hours for a proper visit. The bistro on site looked inviting and I was going to sample a small plate or two, however, the kitchen closes a full hour before the museum does and I missed out.
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What a beautiful museum! Ever so much better than a trip to Fenway Park. I could spend hours going through a place like this. Fascinating. Great mystery too, with the heist. Lovely photographs, too.
Thanks, Diane! Museums with a great backstory always make for a more interesting visit. Isabella sounds like she was a real character.