The Art of the Story

Art History

Key moments in the life of the Gardner Museum.

April 14, 1840 – Isabella Stewart is born in New York City.

April 10, 1860 – Isabella marries John Lowell “Jack” Gardner, a shipping magnate. They move to 152 Beacon Street.

1891 – Isabella’s father dies, leaving her a $1.75 million estate. Isabella buys Vermeer’s The Concert at an auction in Paris, for about $6,000.

1894 – With the help of art scholar Bernard Berenson, Isabella buys her first major Italian work, Botticelli’s Tragedy of Lucretia.

1896 – Isabella and her husband buy Titian’s Europa and Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait—the first piece bought with the intention of creating a museum.

1898 – Jack Gardner dies. Inheriting $2.7 million, Isabella buys land in the undeveloped Fens and goes on with her museum plans.

1899 – The museum’s construction begins.

1902 – Isabella moves into the fourth floor and spends months installing her collection; the museum opens the next year.

1924 – Isabella, ailing from a stroke, dies in her summer bedroom on the fourth floor. In her will, she directs more than $1 million of her estate to the museum and orders that the museum be made available “for the education and enjoyment of the public forever.”

1925 – After Isabella’s death, the museum reopens under its first director, Morris Carter.

1985 – Gardner trustees discuss adding a wing to the museum and installing a climate-control system.

1988 – The Gardner’s board of trustees expands from seven to 11 members in an effort to revive the museum, which is operating at a deficit and sorely needs attention.

1989 – Anne Hawley becomes the fourth director in the museum’s history and quickly begins pushing for improvements.
March 18, 1990 – Thieves make off with 13 irreplaceable works in a crime that stuns Boston.

1991 – The Gardner marks the first anniversary of the heist with a special exhibit of Italian Renaissance drawings, medals, and books.

1991 – A mob figure named George Reissfelder tells a prison friend that the stolen Gardner art is hidden in a “safe house” in Maine but dies before revealing the details. The FBI doesn’t get the tip until 2008; agents search a Maine house but find nothing.

1992 – The Gardner sponsors its first artist-in-residence, poet Martín Espada, who would go on to win a Guggenheim fellowship.

1992 – The Gardner’s new special exhibitions gallery opens, featuring the recently restored El Jaleo by John Singer Sargent, and drawing 39,000 visitors.

1994 – Thanks in large part to Senator Ted Kennedy, Congress makes art theft from a museum a federal crime and raises the statute of limitations from five to 20 years.

2009 – The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules that building a new wing would not violate Isabella Gardner’s will. The addition is scheduled to open in 2012.