Assignment:

Read Isabella Stewart Gardner A Life final chapters and answer the questions for each chapter

Creating the Museum 1896-1903

1.      What was unusual about Mrs. Gardner’s choice of architect?

2.      How and why did her original location change

3.      What style did Norton suggest for the museum?

4. How did the charter describe the museum’s mission? 

5.      What happened to 152 Beacon Street?

6.      When did the museum open to the public?

7. Why was Edith Wharton disappointed about the opening? 

The Life of the Museum 1903-1924

1.      What was the museum’s schedule in 1910?

2.   What was the dispute between ISG and the Treasury Department?

3.      What do we know about Isabella’s view of social issues of her day?

4.      What illness incapacitated Isabella?

5.      When did she die?

6.      What are some significant provisions in her will?

7. How much of an endowment did she leave? 

Assignment:

• Watch the second half of the video The Gilded World of Isabella Stewart Gardner. Begin at 28 minutes

Assignment:

• Watch a video about the Gardner Museum

Assignment:

• Read More About the Museum

On December 1, 1900, she and six others gathered to incorporate the museum. Around the table sat her newly minted board of directors: Harold Jefferson Coolidge, William Amory Gardner, John Chapman Gray, Charles I. Pierson, Willard T. Sears and Henry Swift. They were all family and friends- associates who had earned her trust. They agreed to consitute a corporation with bylaws and a charter that stated its aims: "for purpose of art education, especially by the public exhibition of works of art." In shares of $10 dollars each, capital stock was set at $50,000. Isabella was, of course, the only woman at the table. 

Museum Opening was Night New Year's Eve 1903. Some of the guests included Charles Eliot Norton now 75 years old, the philosopher William James, a young Edith Wharton, in the midst of writing her first novel, Julia Ward Howe who had written he lyrics of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" 40 years earlier, Isabella served champagne and donuts- nothing more.

The Museum officially opened to the public February 23, 1903. Isabella planned for the museum to be open the first and third Monday of every month from 11 A.M. to 3 P.M. Tickets cost a dollar and had to be purchased ahead of time, with no more than 200 visitors admitted on a single day. Each gallery room had a woman attendant to oversee visitors. A board member of the newly formed Simmons College wrote: "Our life in America is so often banal, and so far as beauty is concerned, so Sahara-like, that we owe a more than common debt of gratitude to one who gives us such a chance to see Beauty so enthroned in harmonious surroundings."

Assignment:

• Watch a short video about the Missing Works from the heist. The video places you in the rooms of the museum itself where art is missing.

• https://artsandculture.google.com/story/thirteen-works-explore-the-gardner-s-stolen-art-isabella-stewart-gardner-museum/QAUxZKoNat4oLA?h

Optional Assignment The Heist

We are not going to study The Heist but there are many good videos on line. 

There is a relatively short video called New England's Unsolved: The Gardner heist 30 years later. Here is the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YZZQlpA8HY

I also highly recommend "This Is A Robbery: The World's Biggest Art Heist"  on Netflix. It's in four parts and runs about 4 hours -something to watch after our course is over?

Class 6 Images