Come on a journey with me to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, one of my favorite places in Boston — maybe, anywhere. But first let us pause at the Museum School to read sentiments scribed more than 20 years ago and more relevant than ever. I almost cried.
If you want to know more about Gardner, her extraordinary life, the museum, or the infamous theft of 1990, I’ll leave you and google to it. These are just pictures from a day.
The new wing houses gift shop, cafe and this lounge. Plus some exhibit spaces we didn’t get to this visit.
While others checked coats, I found welcome contrast to pewter skies in a narrow greenhouse.
The early Sargent of a Spanish dancer is one of my favorite paintings by one of my favorite painters. Seeing it and it alone is worth the price of admission (which was gratis for me today but still).
The exquisite atrium follows.
Gardner was wild for her day. It occurred to me on the way home that if she had been a man, there’d be thirteen biopics about her by now with a new one due out next year.
BTW, should you hear of a Rembrandt or Vermeer on the black market, there’s a $10MM reward for information leading to the recovery of the five stolen paintings.
