A Visit To the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

I lived in Boston for years, it's where I did my furniture apprenticeship. The Gardner is a stunning place, but you are so right that the mandate to remain unchanged ruins it almost entirely. It takes a large amount of crazed narcissism and short sightedness, to mandate that your way is correct, forever. Surely in 100 years nothing will change and this will be perfect. When I go back to visit friends, I've taken my wife and daughter to the Peabody Essex, the MFA, ICA, Harvard, BPL... but we haven't made it to the Gardner yet. There others have all gotten multiple visits as exhibitions have changed, but I know the Gardner wil always be there stuck in a time warp, so no rush. Eventually they'll get to be confused as to what everything is, but for now there are other things to see.

Perhaps at the time this museum was conceived the blue book was sufficient. Maybe the museum is underfunded, and under visited to afford the modern methods of informing visitors that you crave. I have visited this museum and sometimes I just take things as they are. As a craftsman myself I appreciated the items on display. The workmanship speaks for itself. Would I like to know who, where they were trained, when they lived and died? I will never know them intimately, certainly not as intimately as their work. Thankfully their work has outlived them. I will not care if someone sees my works after I am gone and knows not the craftsman that built them. I think my work will tell them all thy need to know about me.

My wife and I also spent time there when we were in Boston in 2017, as a bit of variety from the Museum of Fine Arts next door. We also were dismayed by the lack of information, as well as the poor lighting and the lack of care for the artwork. The film of grime was obvious on many pieces, reportedly from years of dinner parties with heavy smoking, although we were assured that they were working on cleaning. I don't recall the QRC guides as an option then.

I recently visited the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam and it was the complete opposite of what you describe here. Since he declared bankruptcy, there was an inventory of all of his possessions, so his home / studio could be presented as it was when he was alive. But, in addition to the usual descriptive signs, there was an excellent audio accompaniment that you cued-up as you entered each room. It was great to have things put into context with how he lived and worked. Without the interpretive material, it would have been much less enjoyable.

The Gardner Museum has made available, as you stated, a place where you can obtain further information about the exhibits. If you had searched the Garner website you would have known about the search engine and it may have benefited you on your visit. To attack people who are no longer alive without knowing their motivation behind their requirements and why they mandated certain things is a bit offensive and snobbish wouldn't you say? I know very much about the Gardner "heist" and have researched it since just shortly after the burglary. The FBI has been unable, due to their insistence on a certain manner of investigation, to locate the items or the perpetrators. A loss to the entire art community and society as well. If a person does not appreciate the manner in which the items are presented, she/he does not have to go there. research the museum first, then go.

Hmmm. A museum without words is … a storehouse.

Of tool related interest are Henry Mercer's Moravian tile works floor tiles in the museum. Mercer was an early serious tool scholar, and established the fantastic Mercer Museum.

Louis,
You are absolutely correct "If a person does not appreciate the manner in which the items are presented, she/he does not have to go there" But until I got there I didn't know how awful the presentation was. And as you can see from the comments. And I left quickly. I am not the only one. As for the motivation - I don't think so. I'm in retail and people decide all the time to buy or not buy from us. They aren't snobs or being offensive. We present stuff, people are entitled to not like it for any reason. Gardner made it abundantly clear that if anything was changed the museum would be closed and the collection dissolved. I personally don't know why but to say that my opinion is offensive because Garner can't answer for it makes no sense. Incidentally all the docents I spoke too would love more captions.

I have to say I'm surprised at your response to the Gardner, which is one of my favorite Boston museums, to which I have returned several times. I like the MFA too, and the Science Museum, and the Peabody and the Fogg. They are all doing different things, which I would have thought was obvious. The Gardner, with its fixed arrangement and the rooms as they were in its owner's time, is not simply an exhibit of related artifacts (the Egyptian Room, American Furniture, Roman Sculpture), but rather a place to explore what it might have been like to visit an extraordinary and beautiful house filled with thoughtfully chosen and loved objects carefully arranged. I couldn't afford any of those objects and I might well have arranged them differently if the house were mine, but I find it inspiring and just plain interesting to see the house as it was. You had better not visit Wharton Esherick's Museum or George Nakashima's home in Pennsylvania or Kipling's Naulhaka in Vermont if you are unprepared to consider a museum that doesn't label everything you see and tell you what to think of it. Your remarks about the relationship between rich people and museums and rich people and art have, of course, an element of crude truth, but seem overly generalized and surprisingly resentful from someone who sells a $1500 grinder, which I expect is worth every penny.

T,
You have a point. Maybe I missed it. The house itself is not to my taste (for that I would choose the Frick) but notion that the point of the museum is not the individual pieces but how one owner assembled and presented objects she was interested in and what I should have been paying attention to is the entire ensemble at a whole is certainly a valid approach that I missed. But it's a slightly different concept than Wharton Esherick's Museum or George Nakashima's, or Kipling is doing. Both Esherick and Nakashima were designers, Kipling a writer and what you see in their houses are not just individual examples of their work, but also the milieu in which they worked and how they perceived used their environments. The entire ensemble is more important than the individual items because the museum is about them. I get that and that's what makes it interesting. What you are saying that the Gardner is along the same lines is true. It is about her and it just doesn't resonate with me. The individual pieces are what stood out to me. I never felt any unifying ideas behind the collection. Which I admit is my shortcoming. However my view isn't a minority view - see many of the other comments in this thread and the docents seem to also feel the shortcomings of the presentation.

People collect things for all sorts of reasons. I collect tools, books on tools and woodworking, and other odds and ends. I appreciate that the best collections are usually labors of love by someone rich enough to buy the objects in the first place. If you collect woodworking books you need a lot less money than if you collect Rembrandts. I am very glad some rich people decided to collect a bunch of Rembrandts and give them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art so that I can see them too. The reasons for the donations also run the gamut. But I am correct about the reasons for founding the museum in 1870. The reasons might not apply in all cases but I'm not resentful even if it does. I would certainly rather see the fruits of being a robber baron in the public eye than locked up in a private estate somewhere.

She was a character for sure. I read she would drink beer with the long-shore men down on the docks. Did you see Beethoven's death mask and the pigeon?

I love the Isabella Stewart Gardener museum, and as an inveterate plaque reader, I appreciate that there are no descriptions next to each piece to distract me with miscellany I've forgotten by the evening. I can just look at this art which moved someone a hundred odd years ago, and sometimes it moves me too.

I just asked my wife, who has been to the ISGM more recently than me (and was incensed to hear someone was besmirching the museum), and as of two months ago they still had a stand in each room with laminated cards giving a brief descriptions of the art. At this point most people have cell phones which can follow QR codes, if you would have preferred the laminated cards it might be worth sending an email and speaking for the holdouts.

I appreciate Joel's reaction to the Gardner. I visited twice, in the 1980's, when I loved it, and again around 2017, when I did not. On my second visit it seemed hot, humid, dark and difficult.
After thinking a while, I am glad that this museum is frozen in time. Many museums change quickly. While I like information, modern lighting, and new exhibits, I don't care for the bad taste, trendiness, and political posturing that characterize some museums today. If a few resist that trend, that makes them uniquely valuable.
Perhaps not every wealthy patron of the arts was a robber baron. She may have been self-indulgent, as he says, but I won't judge her harshly. Whatever her motives, I am glad that she created this museum.

Ryan,
I did not see any cards with descriptions. Just the QR codes. Aside from my own difficulties with my phone I find the use of the phone intrusive. As a group the docents seemed to think more signage would be better. Maybe if the cards were available in each room I would have had a much less negative reaction.