It Belongs in a Museum: Isabella Stewart Gardner builds a place to house her art

There was a high-profile theft of 13 works from this museum in 1990 that remains unsolved with no arrests made and no works recovered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museu...

There is also a Netflix documentary on the theft called "This is a Robbery"

Fun fact: if your first name is Isabella you can visit the museum for free. I believe that she specified this in her will.

Images are loading really slowly for me, so:

https://web.archive.org/web/20221209104039/https://www.lapha...

This is easily my favorite museum building. The collection is somewhat niche but the building alone makes it a worthwhile visit.

Bernard Berenson is only very briefly mentioned in the article, but he's an interesting figure in his own right. He is credited with introducing and popularizing the idea of authenticating paintings by the artist's characteristic style, and helped Gardner acquire much of her collection. He owned a villa outside of Florence, the Villa I Tatti, and left it to Harvard in his will – the university still owns it to this day, and even produces a small vintage of wine from its vineyards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Berenson

There's also a nice article about Berenson (sadly paywalled) here:

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2013/12/bernard-berenson-rev...

It starts with one of my favorite Berenson anecdotes:

An amusing story used to circulate in Florence in the late summer of 1944, a few months before the Allied armies of General Clark pushed the Germans northwards to ultimate defeat. Bernard Berenson, who had been in hiding for over a year, was finally able to walk again along the picturesque country lanes of Settignano that he knew and loved so well. On the first day out, a United States Army vehicle stopped alongside the diminutive, bearded, and impeccably attired gentleman. A G.I. leaned out and, in dreadful pidgin Italian, asked for directions. Mr. Berenson obliged, but naturally in the subtly nuanced and inflected phrases for which his English was famous. Stunned, the G.I. asked: “Hey, buddy, are you American?” When Berenson politely confirmed that he was, the soldier could hardly believe it — “Then what’ you doin’ in a dump like this?”

Great, now we can glue ourselves to paintings.