Boston: Cabinet of Curiosities

During a Pre-Thanksgiving holiday weekend in Boston I was taken to visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and it was a unique and pleasurable experience.

Isabella Stewart was born in New York City and Married Bostonian John Lowell Gardner. Influenced by their travels Isabella became passionate about art. A passion that after receiving inheritance after her father’s death transformed into art collection. After accumulating a remarkable collection she began the planning for the building to house it. In 1903 the Fenway Court (name with which it opened) opened it’s doors.

It is remarkable that it was conceived and executed by a woman on her own terms with no constrictions and that it still functions and is managed as she had instructed. There is a lack of order, a mélange of objects lacking clear classification. It’s honestly a bunch of stuff thrown together, as you would organize your own home. All objects are displayed as she saw them and in relation to her hearts desires.

There are rooms so packed with paintings that you can barely appreciate due to the lack of breath between them, yet even this gives you a different experience, ironically of freshness. We are so used to super curated spaces that this saturation triggers a distinct response. From a curatorial view is very interesting, and in an archival sense I would assume challenging in terms of making your archive cohesive through time to keep the collection going and to contextualize it for the audience.

Interesting facts of the museum are: On March 18th 1990, a pair of thieves disguised a police officers stole 13 works of art. This remains to be the biggest unsolved art theft in world history. Also, in her will she stated that everything must remain as is and that nothing can be acquired or sold form the collection.

If your name is Isabella or if it is your birthday, entrance is Free!

On a same note, I also visited the Institute of Contemporary Art that currently has a Mark Dion exhibition that is pretty awesome.

This is how the exhibition is described in the ICA website: “Mark Dion: Misadventures of a 21st-Century Naturalist, the artist’s first U.S. survey, examines 30 years of his pioneering inquiries into how we collect, interpret, and display nature. Since the early 1990s, Mark Dion (b. 1961, New Bedford, MA) has forged a unique, interdisciplinary practice by exploring and appropriating scientific methodologies. Often with an edge of irony, humor, and improvisation, Dion deconstructs both scientific and museum-based rituals of collecting and exhibiting objects by critically adopting them into his artistic practice.”

All the pieces were so interactive and just fun and interesting. You can open the cabinet’s drawers and walk through the space as if t were your own. Hope some of you can go and experience it!

One Reply

  • Oh, man — this place sounds awesome! I can’t believe I’ve never been there! And Mark Dion’s among my favorites; I’ll have to check out his show at the ICA, too! Thanks so much for sharing this, Alyssa!

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