Displaying items by tag: Isabella Stewart Gardner

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston will be the sole venue for the first ever monographic exhibition dedicated to Carlo Crivelli in the United States. Titled, Ornament and Illusion: Carlo Crivelli of Venice, the exhibition opens Oct. 22 and runs through Jan. 25, 2016.

Carlo Crivelli (about 1435–about 1495) is one of the most important – and historically neglected – artists of the Italian Renaissance. Distinguished by radically expressive compositions, luxuriant ornamental display, and bravura illusionism, his works push the boundaries between painting and sculpture.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston presents the exhibition The Inscrutable Eye: Watercolors by John Singer Sargent, which includes eight paintings that explore the artist’s relationship with the museum’s founder, Isabella Stewart Gardner. The show runs concurrent to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s exhibition John Singer Sargent Watercolors.

Sargent and Gardner shared a long-lasting friendship after meeting at the artist’s studio in London in 1886 by arrangement of their mutual friend, the writer Henry James. Besides the watercolors, the exhibition includes personal mementos such as letters and photographs that span their lifelong friendship.

The Gardner Museum is home to numerous works by Sargent as Gardner acquired 42 of his paintings during their acquaintance. The institution’s holdings span every stage of Sargent’s career and include genre paintings, formal oil paintings, watercolors, studies for public murals and personal sketches. Gardner acquired many of the watercolor paintings on display through buying gifts Sargent made for his friends as they came onto the public market.

The Inscrutable Eye: Watercolors by John Singer Sargent will be on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum through January 20, 2014.

Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum announced that it will host the exhibition Last Seen by the French artist Sophie Calle beginning on October 24, 2013. The show will feature works created by Calle in 1991 in response to the Gardner’s tragic heist, which took place the year before. New works created in 2012 will also be on view.

The exhibition presents 14 photographic and text based works divided into two categories. The first series includes pieces created shortly after the heist, which saw the theft of 13 works by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and others. The second series was created at the Gardner Museum while Calle was revisiting her earlier project.

Soon after the heist, Calle interviewed curators, guards and other staff from the Gardner in front of the museum’s stark walls. Years later she repeated the process but this time, in front of the empty frames that the Gardner later hung. She asked her interviewees what they remembered of the missing works and what they saw when they looked at the blank frames. She used text from the interviews and her own photos to create visual interpretations of loss and memory. Pieranna Cavalchini, the Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art at the Gardner, said, “This exhibition is a poignant reminder of just how much power art and a great artist like Sophie Calle can yield in bringing life, energy and beauty to what is in essence a never-ending story of loss.”

Last Seen will be on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum through October 24, 2014.

23 years after the notorious Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist took place in Boston, the FBI announced that they have identified the thieves responsible for the crime. Officials stated in a press release that the unnamed suspects are from a “criminal organization” based in the Mid-Atlantic States and New England. It is believed that some of the stolen artworks were transported to the Connecticut and Philadelphia regions, where they were offered for sale.

While the works have yet to be recovered, the FBI is reaching out to the public for helpful information and a $5 million reward is being offered for the paintings’ safe return. Today at a news conference, federal law enforcement officials announced that they will launch a comprehensive public awareness campaign that will include a dedicated FBI website, video postings on FBI social media sites, digital billboards, and a podcast.

On March 18, 1990 two thieves posing as Boston police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and made off with thirteen works of art valued at $500 million. The stolen masterpieces include Johannes Vermeer’s (1632-1675) The Concert, one of only 34 known works by the artist in the world; three works by Rembrandt (1606-1669) including his only known seascape; five drawings by Edgar Degas (1834-1917); and an ancient Chinese vessel from the Shang Dynasty. The Gardner heist remains the largest private property theft ever.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum announced that it will open its new wing, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, on Thursday, January 19, 2012. The public opening celebration will begin with a ribbon cutting ceremony, with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino officiating. The Museum will honor its legacy by opening the new wing in January, as Isabella Gardner originally unveiled the Museum on January 1, 1903.

Among the inaugural season programming highlights announced are exhibitions in the new Special Exhibition Gallery and historic building, as well as an expanded concert series showcasing three works commissioned in honor of the new Calderwood Performance Hall. The wing will house essential programming and visitor amenities in purpose-built spaces, enabling preservation and restoration work in the historic 1903 building. Eight months out from the opening, the new wing is almost completely clad in its exterior materials of glass, brick and patinated copper with many interior systems going into place.

“The new wing will reveal the vibrant programming that has been constrained by the historic building’s spaces—a true opening up of the Gardner Museum. Our opening celebration in 2012 will feature all of this programming in purpose-built spaces for the first time in the museum’s history. We invite the public to join us as we celebrate the renewal of the Gardner Museum and the premiere of Renzo Piano’s brilliantly designed spaces which give contemporary form to Gardner’s legacy,” says Anne Hawley, Norma Jean Calderwood Director of the museum.