Typical of many museums founded in the eighteenth century, the Peabody Essex Museum grew out of what was originally described as a “cabinet of natural and artificial curiosities". While observing the second of several fascinating school visits to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, I found that I myself was one of the natural curiosities. The guide introduced me to the group of ten-year olds as a visitor from London, eliciting a cry of 'Oh my god, do you have an ACCENT?' When I obligingly uttered a few words of my best RP, the five girls gasped loudly with delight and wonder... Having kept quiet for the rest of the tour, at the end, I started chatting to one of the teachers, only to turn around to discover two of the girls following close behind me, just listening - 'we loooove the way you speak!'. After repeated demands to 'say something', they all wanted my approval of their English intonation - some brilliant, others quite hilarious - imagine 'Cor Blimey Guv'nor' spoken by the Queen doing Australian.
Following several thought-provoking meetings with the education team at the MFA and discussions with members of their large docent teaching group, I made my way round the corner to the recently-refurbished Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Even though I'd visited ten years ago, walking into the courtyard, which Gardner designed as a 15th-century Venetian palazzo, still took my breath away. She was such a remarkable woman, definitely a heroine of mine, building an outstanding collection of paintings, drawings and decorative art from Europe, the Middle East and Asia, supporting American artists like Sargent and creating fascinating building in which to view them. It opened during her lifetime in 1903, in her words, "for the education and enrichment of the public forever". Later in her life, she described her “picture-habit’’ as being “as bad as the morphine or whiskey one". For me, visiting palazzo was less about the individual paintings, stunning as they are, but about encountering Gardner herself; so infused is the museum with her personality, her determination to collect and her wish to share her appreciation of the arts.
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| Isabella Stewart Gardner in Venice, 1894, Anders Zorn |
Following several thought-provoking meetings with the education team at the MFA and discussions with members of their large docent teaching group, I made my way round the corner to the recently-refurbished Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Even though I'd visited ten years ago, walking into the courtyard, which Gardner designed as a 15th-century Venetian palazzo, still took my breath away. She was such a remarkable woman, definitely a heroine of mine, building an outstanding collection of paintings, drawings and decorative art from Europe, the Middle East and Asia, supporting American artists like Sargent and creating fascinating building in which to view them. It opened during her lifetime in 1903, in her words, "for the education and enrichment of the public forever". Later in her life, she described her “picture-habit’’ as being “as bad as the morphine or whiskey one". For me, visiting palazzo was less about the individual paintings, stunning as they are, but about encountering Gardner herself; so infused is the museum with her personality, her determination to collect and her wish to share her appreciation of the arts.
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