An Off-The-Wall Exhibition At The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The charm of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is that its staggering collection is still seen just as the Boston doyenne intended when she opened her Venetian-inspired palace at the turn of the century. 

“Isabella Stewart Gardner is always a little bit ahead,” said Curator of the Collection Christina Nielsen. “She’s always avant-garde; she’s against the grain.”

This is a woman, after all, who began her collection by outbidding the Louvre and London’s National Gallery for a Vermeer.

“Suddenly, the painting isn’t going to a national collection in London, and it’s not going to Paris: it’s going to Beacon Street in Boston,” Nielsen said. “And so everybody suddenly knows who Isabella Stewart Gardner is.”

She filled her palace with art she tracked down around the world, placing masterpieces cheek by jowl with artifacts she thought should be viewed together. It was disparate, and she was dogged, said Nielsen, recounting Gardner’s clever acquisition of “Archangel Michael” by Spanish painter Pedro Garcia de Benabarre.

“A dealer had offered it to her,” Nielsen said, “and Paul Sachs, who was a really renowned museum figure who was the deputy director of the Fogg [Art Museum], snatched the painting out from under her. So she quickly delivered a very kind dinner invitation to Paul Sachs, and he came. She jokingly threatened him with a knife at the table and made him a good offer, and the painting arrived at the Gardner a few days later.”

Right now though, it’s off the wall—hanging in a special exhibition that offers 25 of the museum’s masterpieces out of context. The show tells the story of how Gardner collected; how she fulfilled her passion for Dutch, Italian and Spanish works; how she pursued the masters—scooping up Michelangelo, Raphael and Botticelli. Gardner’s will famously stipulates that nothing in her palace can be moved. But extensive renovations underway on the museum’s second floor have made this exception possible, just this once.

“Even I was astonished by the quality of the works, the visual impact that they have,” said Nielsen.

The Gardner’s new director, Peggy Fogelman, said it’s poignant to have arrived just as the museum reexamines the heart of its founder.

“The palace was really a hub for artists of every kind,” she said. “The place really lived and breathed creativity and that really is also our future. That’s also our legacy.”

Fogelman’s challenge, some might think, is leading a museum where the chief collection cannot change. She doesn’t see it that way. 

“It’s not that the art changes,” she said. “Sometimes we come back and we see our favorite work of art. But it’s an entirely new experience because we’re not the same people we were three months ago, three years ago.”

“Off the Wall,” Fogelman said, has been an eye-opening experience for how well, in a new light, the works can suddenly be seen. It’s made her think about lighting throughout the museum.

“There’s always a balance,” she said, “And you know, we don’t want it to become an environment where only certain works are spot lit.”

Her first major act is allowing photography in all areas of the museum. Gardner, Fogelman believes, was an original social networker. In the newly re-opened Vatichino, a room Gardner kept and named, are volumes of her correspondence—letters, receipts and photographs, including exchanges with famed friends like John Singer Sargent and Henry James.

“I am absolutely certain that she would be on Instagram every day if it were available to her,” Fogelman said. “She would be sharing all these images with her friends and she’d be curating and inviting others to curate those images, which is what she’s done in the palace.”

As for what Fogelman will do—just months in, she’s still finding her way, learning the collection and mining the museum’s DNA. 

I hope to be a very accessible director. I would love my tenure to stand for a kind of dynamism and a sense of welcome. I want people to feel that the Gardner is their home.”

The Gardner’s new director, Peggy Fogelman, said it’s poignant to have arrived just as the museum reexamines the heart of its founder.

“The palace was really a hub for artists of every kind,” she said. “The place really lived and breathed creativity and that really is also our future. That’s also our legacy.”

Fogelman’s challenge, some might think, is leading a museum where the chief collection cannot change. She doesn’t see it that way. 

“It’s not that the art changes,” she said. “Sometimes we come back and we see our favorite work of art. But it’s an entirely new experience because we’re not the same people we were three months ago, three years ago.”

“Off the Wall,” Fogelman said, has been an eye-opening experience for how well, in a new light, the works can suddenly be seen. It’s made her think about lighting throughout the museum.

“There’s always a balance,” she said, “And you know, we don’t want it to become an environment where only certain works are spot lit.”

Her first major act is allowing photography in all areas of the museum. Gardner, Fogelman believes, was an original social networker. In the newly re-opened Vatichino, a room Gardner kept and named, are volumes of her correspondence—letters, receipts and photographs, including exchanges with famed friends like John Singer Sargent and Henry James.

“I am absolutely certain that she would be on Instagram every day if it were available to her,” Fogelman said. “She would be sharing all these images with her friends and she’d be curating and inviting others to curate those images, which is what she’s done in the palace.”

As for what Fogelman will do—just months in, she’s still finding her way, learning the collection and mining the museum’s DNA. 

I hope to be a very accessible director. I would love my tenure to stand for a kind of dynamism and a sense of welcome. I want people to feel that the Gardner is their home.”