Episode #38: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Her Museum: A Curated Life
In celebration of a new biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner, this show focuses on the life of one of the Gilded Age’s most passionate art collectors and the creation of one of the most extraordinary American museums.
Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) was a member of Boston’s Brahmin society during the Gilded Age. A philanthropist and passionate art collector, she created her very own museum she called Fenway Court which opened to the public in 1903. Her museum, now called the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, resembles a Venetian-style palazzo and rises above Boston’s Fens, and showcases objects and art from the classical world to the 20th century, all displayed today just as she laid them out herself.
Gardner was considered eccentric in her public behavior and the press eagerly reported on her latest moves, but what we can know of her inner life and love of art and her deep desire that the public could see it too, is the focus of this episode.
Diana Seave Greenwald, curator of the collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum joins The Gilded Gentleman for a talk about the new biography which she co-wrote and a look at just who this deeply fascinating woman of the Gilded Age really was and how she built her museum, left, as she wished, for us all to see today.
by her friend John Singer Sargent 1888
LISTEN NOW: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Her Museum: A Curated Life
Related Podcast:
Inside The Frick Collection: The Upstairs Downstairs World of a Gilded Age Mansion