The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and its magnificent collection are enlivened through fresh insights and new photography in this updated guide This updated guide to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum charts new pathways through the beloved institution’s superb collection. Gardner, a trail-blazing American who was among the most prominent patrons of her day, built a Venetian-inspired palazzo in Boston to share her exquisite and thought-provoking art objects from diverse cultures and eras. She hosted luminaries in the worlds of music, dance, and literature, and supported such famed artists as Henry James and John Singer Sargent. The authors look at masterpieces by Botticelli, Rembrandt, Titian, and others, as well as hidden treasures, including decorative arts, correspondence, and photographs. Rather than positioning the museum simply as a historical gem, they present it as a site for forging connections between past and present and reinforcing the founder’s legacy of sustaining contemporary art, music, and education. Featuring all-new photography, the book captures the uniqueness of this museum, helping us consider anew what the museum meant in Gardner’s time and what it means in ours.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: A Guide

Arts & Photography

Nielsen, Christina

Riley, Casey

Silver, Nathaniel

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

Illuminating the photographer’s contributions to New York’s Downtown art scene and her acute feminist work\nPhotographer Marcia Resnick (b. 1950) earned recognition as part of the legendary Downtown New York art scene of the 1970s and 1980s. Her portraits of the era’s major cultural figures, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Belushi, and Susan Sontag, have contributed to the scene’s mythic status. Against this backdrop, Resnick also produced a significant body of work that engaged with the history of art, took a humorous approach to conceptual art and feminism, and proposed new ideas for what photography could be.\nSpanning the artist’s career, this richly illustrated volume explores Resnick’s early influences and education at Cooper Union and CalArts; discusses her series and photobooks such as See and Re-visions; and situates the artist’s work within the history of contemporary art. An afterword by Laurie Anderson speaks to the very personal vision of Resnick’s photography.\nPublished in association with the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, George Eastman Museum, and Minneapolis Institute of Art

Marcia Resnick: As It Is or Could Be

Goodyear III, Frank H.

Hostetler, Lisa

Photography & Video

In the winter of 1903, shortly after the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum first opened to the public, John Singer Sargent used the Gothic Room of the museum as a studio. Among the portraits he painted was one of Isabella’s dear friends, Gretchen Osgood Warren. This finely illustrated gem of a publication explores these three remarkable friends: Isabella Stewart Gardner, the museum’s founder and patroness of the arts; John Singer Sargent, premier portrait painter and the museum’s first artist-in-residence; and Gretchen Osgood Warren, a highly accomplished Gilded Age woman. The collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum includes an astonishing array of objects, including renowned paintings, rare books, sculpture, and decorative arts, as well as more personal items such as collected letters, Isabella’s own correspondence, and ephemera. Mirroring Isabella’s inimitable gallery installations, this publication uses both fine and decorative art, photographs, and correspondence to provide a snapshot in time of the first few years of the museum, in which the collection and its carefully curated spaces inspired new works of art. As the museum’s first artist-in-residence, Sargent fulfilled Gardner’s hopes for a new kind of cultural institution in Boston, one that would inspire creativity, cultivate artistic talent, and bring joy to artists and amateurs alike. Sargent painted five portraits during his stay at the museum and John Templeman Coolidge, a friend of Gardner’s, captured Sargent at work in the Gothic Room in seven candid photographs. Cigarette in mouth, brush in hand, and a smile on his face, Sargent is seen painting Gretchen Osgood Warren and her daughter who are posing and laughing. This vibrant double portrait stands as a testament to Sargent’s absorption of the museum’s inspirational qualities and his sensitivity to his subject. Gretchen Osgood Warren was intellectually ambitious and after sitting for her portrait with Sargent, she moved to England with her family and pursued a degree in philosophy and metaphysics at Oxford University; when she returned to Boston, she pursued writing poetry. Gardner embraced an increasingly progressive view of women’s rights by the turn of the century and looked approvingly on the educational, political, and professional ambitions of Gretchen Warren’s generation. In Warren, Gardner also discovered a deeply appreciative and sympathetic friend. The eighteen letters between the two women, published here for the first time, illustrate an intimate thirty-five year friendship sharing life’s joys, successes, hardships, and losses. This publication is the latest in the Close Up series of books accompanying Gardner Museum exhibitions which showcase aspects of the museum’s outstanding permanent collection.

Sargent on Location: Gardner’s First Artist-in-Residence

Reluga, Elizabeth

Paul Holberton Publishing

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