How the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Challenges Modern Curation

A made-in-Chicago bronze sculpture titled “Young Sophocles” stands next to a set of three Indian daggers and sheaths, all in front of a hanging Japanese military flag.

These objects represent merely a few of the over 18,000 other creative works displayed in a small, cramped museum. Like the aforementioned orientation, the rest of the artifacts in this room, affectionately called the Vatichino, lack a clear association with one another. In fact, there is barely any association between the galleries, leaving viewers with very little understanding of the artwork they saw during their visit.

The Vatichino is one of many galleries inside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, located in Boston’s Back Bay. The museum was founded by Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1899 and opened to the public in 1903, displaying her vast collection of art. Gardner was a wealthy American art collector who married into a prosperous family and inherited wealth from her own parents, both of which helped fund her passion for art.

After her death in 1924, her museum stayed open to the public, under the restrictive stipulation that the collection and galleries remained exactly as she left them — the museum was not to make any changes to the display, acquisition, or sale of items. This condition has allowed Gardner’s distinct vision of curation to remain.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an institution unlike any other — each room was uniquely crafted by Gardner and is stacked from head to toe with art. Walls are left with little space remaining, sculptures are stuck in the crevices of the rooms, and artworks are put near an array of other pieces that seemingly have nothing to do with each other. The Museum also has a courtyard — the heart and most iconic view of the institution — that houses a sculpture garden marrying Roman, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance elements. The courtyard features fresh seasonal displays of flowers and plants, with various art pieces dotting the space.

Visitors to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum may be left with mixed feelings upon first perusing its collection. Even experienced art connoisseurs are likely to be surprised by what they see — it is hard to find a museum like the Gardner anywhere else in the world. Guests are likely used to artwork presented on white, bare gallery walls with extensive labels that provide historical context and analysis by art historians. This museum, in contrast, is disorganized and chaotic. But even if visitors find that they don’t take away any substantial new knowledge from their tour of the museum, they’re likely to leave with something just as valuable — inspiration.

As the world keeps changing, so does the art industry — art institutions have prioritized the study of art as well as the democratization of art collections. Museums like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have realigned themselves to become a resource accessible to everyone, in contrast to when art was exclusively available to the elite.

In the effort to democratize art, however, most museums have converged into displaying their artwork in a specific way: There are long wall labels that help orient first-time visitors to what they are looking at. These wall labels are certainly optional — no one is forcing people to read them, but their mere existence makes newcomers feel like it’s the right thing to do. When it comes to anthropological museums, this generally is the morally right thing to do, especially when there exists ethical implications to the displayal of these artifacts.

Additionally, museums frequently categorize their collections in a systematic way: Objects that have similar affiliations are placed next to each other. Most frequently, pieces are organized based on who they were created by and where in the world they originate.

However, while there exists a logical pathway of reasoning for this method of display, the field of art begins to drift away from arguably the most important of its features: to inspire, experience, and move.

Ultimately, there exists a large gap between art institutions and art itself. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a unique institution that has been able to resist the modern museum standard — Gardner’s museum, unlike others, presents viewers with the unique opportunity to have an intimate experience with the art.

In a cultural landscape where museums increasingly work to educate and categorize, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum exposes the limits of such intentions. Specifically, Gardner’s unique and somewhat archaic arrangement demonstrates that the standard method of curation is not the only way to engage with art. In the contemporary art industry, the museum offers a rare model that prioritizes personal experience.