Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History
A Visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston
A woman ahead of her time, Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) was brilliant, dynamic, and a powerful force for good. Wealthy and highly educated, she traveled the world with her husband, collecting art and hanging out with artists, musicians, writers, and other creatives.
“Mrs. Jack Gardner is one of the seven wonders of Boston. There is nobody like her in any city in this country. She is a millionaire Bohemienne. She is the leader of the smart set, but she often leads where none dare follow… She imitates nobody; everything she does is novel and original.”— a Boston reporter
After her husband’s death in 1898, she built a world class art museum in Boston in order to share their massive collection with the public. She felt a life without art, without beauty, was not worth living and wanted the people of Boston to know that beauty. She was dedicated to the museum, which was also her home, and she personally arranged each and every piece in her vast eclectic collection.
She opened the museum up to artists and musicians to work and perform, inviting the public to attend. The museum supports children’s art classes, internships for young artists, and fellowships to up-and-coming artists to this day.
“She lives at a rate and intensity, with a reality that makes other lives seem pale, thin and shadowy.”—Bernard Berenson wrote of Isabella
Gardner died in 1924. Her will leaves the museum “for the education and enjoyment of the public forever.” She stipulated that the collection must remain intact and with the works displayed exactly as she left them. The inner garden, the atrium, is maintained according to her specifications and changes with the seasons.
Women in history have often been intentionally written out of the story, minimized, or glossed over. The classes I teach for OLLI at Sierra College about America’s First Ladies are filled with stories about those strong and fascinating women, most of whom are unfamiliar to Americans because they’ve been left out of our official history. I like discovering and reading about strong women from the past and bringing their inspiring stories to the fore.
I visited Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum in Boston on my first post-covid-vaccination adventure. It’s springtime, so it was the season of hanging nasturtiums—California-poppy-bright-orange curtains of flowers hung from the windows encircling the atrium. Orchids were in bloom, too. The air was thick with honeyed perfume.
Coincidentally, the same week I was in Boston, Netflix debuted its new short docuseries, This Is A Robbery, all about the still-unsolved art heist at Isabella’s beloved museum in 1990. It’s considered to be the largest art theft in the history of the world and included works by Degas, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. Where the paintings and drawings were once displayed, now hang only empty frames. Despite the $10 million reward, none of the art treasures has ever been recovered.
How would Isabella feel if she knew… if it had happened while she was still alive?
Check out the museum and the Netflix docuseries:
https://www.gardnermuseum.org/
https://www.wbur.org/artery/2021/04/05/isabella-stewart-gardner-museum-art-heist-netflix-docuseries
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Thank you for your inspiration and wonderful, creative efforts to bring the lives of strong women to the forefront! And with such gorgeous nature photos. I’m truly sorry I didn’t get to know her. She would have been as inspiring as you are!
Thanks for writing about Isabella and her museum: which I had never, ever heard of! Cheers to strong women: including YOU!