Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Framing the Past:
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Legacy and the Perils of Spectacle

Figure 1. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Historic Building. Photograph. Accessed May 22, 2025. https://www.gardnermuseum.org/about/new-meets-old.

Boston, Massachusetts, is renowned for its rich history and diverse cultural attractions, drawing millions of visitors annually. Among the city’s artistic and historical landmarks is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (ISGM), a unique institution that houses an extraordinary collection of over 10,000 objects, ranging from “ancient Chinese bronzes to Renaissance tapestries, from paintings by Raphael and Rubens to those of Whistler and Matisse.”[1] The museum (figure 1), founded by Isabella Stewart Gardner, the museum opened in 1903 as a personal and intimate space for art appreciation. In the institution's early years, visitors bought limited tickets in Copley Square, a short distance away. They toured the museum along a predetermined walking path lacking information labels or explanatory text. Today, the museum's display mechanisms and ambiance remain essentially unchanged, reflecting Gardner’s original vision as outlined in her will. Her bequest to the City of Boston stipulated that “no works of art shall be placed [within the museum] other than such as I, or the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Fenway, Incorporated, own or have contracted for at my death.”[2] The museum's historical fidelity, as reflected in its adherence to the founder's intentions, is a testament to its preservation efforts. This devotion, however, also presents challenges in engaging contemporary visitors. There is a building tension between the founders' intentions of preservation, and the importance of the institution's evolution becomes clear in the museum's exhibition rooms, where theatrical aesthetics often overshadow opportunities for critical engagement with the collection. As Kathleen McLean, the Center for Public Exhibitions director at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, notes, “The act of showing brings with it an inherent dialectic between the intentions of the presenter and the experiences of the spectator.”[3] While Gardner’s historically fixed displays offer a visually captivating experience, the museum's unwavering adherence to the founder's intentions transforms it into a space of spectacle rather than substance, limiting its ability for critical interpretation, educational engagement, and contemporary relevance.

As the Gardner Museum became a popular cultural destination, institutional pressures began challenging Gardner’s static vision. Upon Isabella Stewart Gardner's death in 1924, she left behind strict guidelines for her estate and art collection. "Absolutely nothing in the museum was to be moved or sold, and no additional artworks could be added, or else the entire collection would be dispersed. In effect, the museum was to be frozen in time even as the years wore on."[4] As the museum's popularity increased over the years, it became evident that the original footprint of the historic building could no longer meet the demands of a modern audience. The limited space and inadequate visitor amenities hindered the institution's ability to function as a contemporary cultural organization.[5] In 2004, the board of trustees approved the expansion of the ISGM, initiating plans for a New Wing (figure 2). The new development directly contradicted Gardner's explicit instructions, and despite the controversy, the expansion opened in 2012. It included performance spaces, temporary galleries, classrooms, conservation labs, a gift shop, a restaurant, and the Glass Connector (figure 3), nearly doubling the museum's footprint. While the expansion ensured the museum's long-term operational viability, it also amplified its identity as a site of spectacle. Several local groups, including the Friends of Historic Mission Hill, expressed deep concern over the museum's apparent willingness to disregard Gardner's explicit wishes during the project's approval process.[6] Even though the institution gained negative attention due to the legal proceedings surrounding the expansion, the pageantry on display would have excited the founder. Historically, Gardner embraced the mythmaking that surrounded her and her museum. As detailed by Francis Storrs, "Gardner happily watched her mythology grow, even if it meant letting false accounts of her exploits go uncorrected in the press."[7]

Figure 3. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, The Glass Connector. Photograph. Accessed May 22, 2025. https://www.gardnermuseum.org/about/new-meets-old.

The tension between Isabella’s legacy and the museum's contemporary relevance marks the beginning of a broader shift in how the ISGM looks to engage its audience through aspects of spectacle. After paying admission in the New Wing, proceeding through the Glass Connector, and entering the Historic Building, guests are met with one of the institution's most iconic and theatrical spaces, the Central Courtyard and Spanish Cloisters. "Long before she was a patron of the arts, a passionate music fan, or even a person of renown among her fellow Bostonians, Isabella Stewart Gardner loved to garden."[8] To this day, the Courtyard (figure 4) is meticulously sculpted and arranged with lush greenery and seasonal flowers to inspire awe and wonder. Historically, Isabella's interest in gardening informed the selection of growing plants on display in this space. The Courtyard has since evolved into a performative stage-like area for concerts, events, and seasonal programming to enhance visitor engagement. The ISGM's efforts to highlight the Courtyard are evident, and it simultaneously operates as a visual decoy, ultimately diverting attention from the museum's collection. Gretchen Stein Rhodes comments, "Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum collapses the dialectic, exhibiting simultaneously the high art of the elite connoisseur and the popular emphasis on theatrical display, decorative interiors, and spectacle.”[9] Figures five and six illustrate how many visitors pose for photographs in and around the Courtyard, often absorbed in capturing the perfect image while remaining largely unaware of the rich history surrounding them.

Figure 7. Tami Mullins (@tami_mullins), Detail image of One of My Favourite Art Museums, 2025. Photograph. Instagram, April 26, 2025. https://www.instagram.com/tami_mullins?igsh=d2h1MXphejk4eG1j.

The Gardener's photogenic and curated atmosphere influences the museum's overall environment and visitor interaction. As discussed in Allan Chong’s article Mrs. Gardner’s Museum of Myth, “Curators of museums founded by eccentrics defend and deflect in a sometimes-futile attempt to focus attention on art and patronage.”[10] The ISGM had researched the relationship between spectacle and engagement at the museum as early as 2008, when the institution commissioned Randi Korn & Associates to study visitor engagement among adults aged 18 to 34.[11] While many participants reported interacting with the art at programming such as After Hours events, most described their primary motivation for attending the event as the experience itself.[12] The study ultimately recommended that the museum continue hosting such events to attract younger audiences. Korn & Associates also cautioned that technology and advertising alone are insufficient strategies for audience development.[13] This insight underscores a key tension in the ISGM's evolving identity between creating immersive experiences and cultivating sustained, meaningful interaction with the collection. The Audience Research Study also explored how interpretive strategies, or the lack thereof, influence and shape visitor behaviour. One significant finding revealed that "several interviewees noticed that Gardner does not provide wall labels. A little more than half of the interviewees liked the absence of the labels because it allowed them to construct their interpretation and made the museum feel more like home."[14] While the intimate setting might suggest a form of personalized engagement, it also reveals how the museum's carefully curated ambiguity reinforces its mystique. The label-free environment intended to preserve Gardner's vision blurs the line between museum and theatre set, drawing visitors into an experience that is more atmospheric and emotional than educational.

The Courtyard's visual dominance and central location often overshadow the surrounding galleries, where Gardner thematically curated and densely layered each room's installations. As spectacle increasingly defines visitor interaction and behaviour at the ISGM, many of the collection's significant works, including works of considerable historical and cultural importance, remain unnoticed or ignored. According to the ISGM’s website, "Isabella created her installations to evoke an emotional response in visitors. That's why, unlike at other institutions, there aren't conventional labels in this museum. She wanted you to find your own meanings."[15] While this philosophy aligns with Gardner's original vision of interpretive freedom, the lack of information can often disorient visitors in today's contemporary culture. The crowded salon-style displays can be overwhelming, and the lack of educational context makes navigating through the various paintings, textiles, and objects frustrating and challenging for visitors. Rhodes notes that the “bizarre stylistic, generic, and anachronistic juxtapositions are found throughout the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum… Stories emerge through the movement of the visitor in relation to the works in their settings, symphonies of coincidence and contradiction.”[16] In place of direct contextual engagement, many visitors turn to external aids, including purchasing a guidebook from the bookstore or scanning QR codes on their phones to access even the most basic information. For those seeking intellectual or educational depth, oscillating between absorbing the space and consulting a device or printed guide creates a fractured experience. The constant negotiation between aesthetic immersion and the pursuit of understanding leaves visitors suspended between two modes of attention. Ultimately, this undermines the possibility of deep contemplation or sustained learning. The resulting experience privileges aesthetic immersion over critical understanding, reinforcing the museum's transformation into a site of visual consumption rather than sustained interpretation.

Figure 8. John Singer Sargent, El Jaleo, 1882. Oil on canvas. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/collection/13259.

This pattern of spectacle over substance continues throughout the museum’s interior, beginning on the first floor, where several important works are disguised among the visual barrage in each room. In the Spanish Cloister, El Jaleo (1882) by John Singer Sargent (figure 8) commands a dramatic presence, framed by an arched niche and deliberately emphasized by the lighting.[17] Continuing to explore the first-floor galleries, it is easy to overlook Henri Matisse's The Terrace, Saint-Tropez (1904) (figure 9) in the Yellow Room, hanging among various smaller works.[18] Similarly, Edouard Manet's intimate Portrait of Madame Auguste Manet (1863) in the Blue Room and Edgar Degas's A Ballerina (ca. 1880) in the Macknight Room (figure 10) are tucked into domestic settings that reflect Gardner's emotional curation where patrons are likely to miss the historic pieces among the thousands of objects on display.[19]

Figure 11. Sandro Botticelli, The Story of Lucretia, 1500. Tempera and oil on panel. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/collection/10986.

The ongoing issue of spectacle and confusion becomes even more evident as one ascends to the second floor. In the Raphael Room, Tommaso Inghirami (c. 1500) by Raphael and The Story of Lucretia by Sandro Botticelli (Figure 11) anchor the institution's Renaissance acquisitions.[20] Nearby, Michelangelo's Pietà (1540) in the Short Gallery exemplifies Gardner's deep engagement with religious themes, which are apparent throughout the galleries.[21] The ambiguous displays continue throughout each room on each floor. Some of the collection's most significant pieces of European art can be missed or overshadowed by the museum's most infamous moment. These works are easily missed by the spectacle in the Dutch Room, which was once home to masterpieces by artists such as Vermeer and Rembrandt. Unsolved to this day, the 1990 theft of thirteen works cast a shadow over the room, transforming absence into attraction. The ISGM still hangs the empty frames left on the walls (Figure 12), functioning as memorials and, more problematically, as visual magnets for a different kind of attention rooted in mystery, loss, and sensationalism.[22] Even though Rembrandt's Self-Portrait (1669) and Rubens's Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (c. 1629–30) remain in the room, they are often sidelined by the allure of what is missing. [23]

Figure 12. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Dutch Room. Photograph. Accessed May 22, 2025. https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/rooms/dutch-room.

As visitors progress to the galleries on the third floor, the overwhelming and distracted experience continues and is further highlighted in the Titian Room. Housed in this third-floor gallery is arguably one of the most significant works in the entire collection, Titian's Rape of Europa (1562).[24] This painting, a cornerstone of European art history, should command sustained attention. Situated just under Rape of Europa sits one of Titian's pre-drawings (Figure 13) which should also draw intrigue from visitors as it tells the tale of the creation of this monumental painting by a historical giant. However, it, too, competes with the layered mythology and visual overstimulation that defines the ISGM experience. Spectacle often guides movement and meaning in an institution where even Titian risks becoming background.

Figure 13. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, TitianRoom. Photograph. Accessed May 22, 2025. https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/rooms/titian-room. 

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum embodies a complex tension between honouring legacy and legal wishes while remaining relevant in contemporary society. When “stepping into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is like entering a foreign country… it is also entirely unknown. In here, the institutions of chronology and geography are thrown aside in favour of Idea, of Mood, of Statement.”[25] The museum was designed to inspire wonder and personal discovery, the museum has also become a site for spectacle and surface-level consumption. Gardner's vision of emotional engagement and interpretive freedom was revolutionary when the museum opened; it now clashes with the 21st-century digital culture. At the ISGM, the visual allure of the building often overshadows the historical context and the opportunities for intellectual depth. The salon-style installations and the myths surrounding both Gardner and her museum have transformed what could be a profoundly significant cultural site into a photogenic destination, appealing to social media influencers and those looking to capture captivating images rather than deeply engage with the collection. The ongoing influence of digital word-of-mouth advertising further undermines the ISGM's capacity to engage visitors seeking a space for deeper reflection and education. As contemporary audiences navigate the museum, they uncover an atmosphere prioritizing aesthetic experience over educational engagement. The carefully curated ambiguity that once promoted intimacy now leads to confusion and potential disinterest as visitors fluctuate between enjoying the ambiance and searching for context. Even renowned works such as Botticelli's Virgin and Child with an Angel (1470-74) (figure 14) and John Singer Sargent’s Isabella Stewart Gardner (1888) (figure 15) risk becoming photographic backdrops within the broader spectacle.[26] For the ISGM to thrive as both a historical landmark and a contemporary cultural institution, it must reconcile Gardner's founding vision with the interpretive needs of a 21st-century audience. While digital aids and knowledgeable volunteers are steps in the right direction, they cannot fully address the disorientation caused by an environment designed for aesthetic immersion rather than thoughtful contemplation and interpretation.

To continue honouring Gardner's legacy, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum must embrace strategies that encourage critical dialogue and provide educational context. When the institution can combine entertainment and education, the ISGM will transform its site of spectacle into a site of edutainment, “a hybrid form of attraction that seeks to create a synergy between the educational value and the entertainment value of their heritage contents.”[27] Altering the Gardner Museum into a site for edutainment will encourage visitors to look beyond the setting's allure and engage with a collection that showcases an extraordinary woman's intellect and curiosity. Rather than relying solely on the ambiance's spectacle, Isabella's myth and the theft, the museum can convert passive wonder into active inquiry. The museum can transcend mere spectacle by encouraging visitors to engage deeply with over 17,500 paintings, sculptures, furniture, textiles, silver, ceramics, rare books, and archival objects from around the world.[28] By strengthening its focus on education, the ISGM can reaffirm its role as a place for critical interpretation, educational engagement, and lasting relevance.