Photos courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum website.
I am writing today to talk about one of my all time favorite museums: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. I am also writing in defense of the personal museum, as contrasted to the "scientific" museum which has been the model for the last 100 years. For me, the richness of the total experience in a personal museum outweighs the disadvantage of not seeing all works in a neutral setting and perfect light.
The Gardner museum is a recreated Venetian Renaissance palace, built by Isabella to evoke the Barberi Palace in Venice, which she leased for her trips there, and designed to display her personal collection of art…
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Isabella Stuart Gardner, one of the foremost collectors of art of her period at the end of the 19th century, was not primarily a patron of contemporary artists. She did purchase the work of living artists, including her portrait by John Singer Sargent, but her collecting focused primarily on artists of the European Renaissance. She was, however, a patron of another kind. She was a patron of the Renaissance specialist and connoisseur, Bernard Berenson, supporting him in his travels in Europe in search of art, and buying almost seventy works through his efforts.
Isabella was born in New York city, but, in marrying John Lowell "Jack" Gardner, married into one of the oldest Boston families. Jack's grandfather was the Salem shipping tycoon, Joseph Peabody…
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