Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
She's old and grand, can be both cheery and solemn, and she's been a Boston institution for decades.
Once known as Fenway Court, the moderate-sized but impressive museum sits in the Back Bay Fenway area near the Museum of Fine Art. It was the dream of wealthy Bostonian Isabella Gardner, and the collection grew out of Gardner's private pieces, which she had started accumulating while touring Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in the 1900s. The museum's collection is largely early Italian and Dutch masterpieces with a heavy Christian influence. There are also rooms are dedicated to Asian, Middle Eastern and American works, including many of John Singer Sargent, who was a friend of Gardner. At one point Gardner set up a studio and worked out of the museum. One of Sargent's pieces on display is a full-length portrait of Gardner. Titian's Europa, Botticelli's Lucretia, Vermeer's The Concert, and Rembrandt's Self-Portrait are among the most revered works in the collection.
Two things that are probably most noticeable about the museum are the lush garden in the center courtyard and the occasional empty gilded frames on the walls. Isabella instructed that museum, which is built in the style of a 15th century Venetian palace, be built around a garden that lights up the otherwise dark and somber building. The frames are reminder of the infamous 1990 art theft, in which 13 works of art, including pieces by Rembrandt, Degas, and Monet, were stolen by two men posing as police officers. The art theft, noted as the costliest in U.S. history, has yet to be solved. Garner in her will had instructed the collection not be changed, so more than ten years later, the frames still hang where masterpieces were once cut out.
Getting There
The museum is located at 280 The Fenway in the Back Bay area near Simmons College. Its normal hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. The closest subway stop is the T's Museum stop on the Green Line, the E route.
