Join a member of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum horticulture staff on Friday, April 10 for a 30-minute presentation about the role of plants at the Museum, past and present. Then, step into the enchanting world of plants at the Gardner Museum for an hour-long guided experience through the galleries. Experience the magic of the verdant Courtyard, view the Monks Garden designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, and discuss botanical imagery embedded throughout Isabella Stewart Gardner’s collection.
This is a ticketed event, and space is limited. Click HERE to see pricing and availability, and to purchase tickets. The program will be repeated Monday, May 4 and Wednesday, June 10.
Innovative thinkers are partnering with private philanthropies to contribute to the design, development, and delivery of public amenities in cities across the country. How do these location-specific partnerships create better cities and more engaged communities? Join Charles Waldheim on March 26 at 7 pm as he leads a discussion with three leaders in the realm of place-based philanthropy: Rip Rapson, president and CEO of The Kresge Foundation; Kira Strong, Senior Director of the High Line Network; and Kristy Edmunds, Director of MASS MoCA.
In this edition of the Larger Landscape Conversation, expert discourse will seek to foster an understanding of how private investment is taking a more significant role in the creation of public landscapes and the development of new urban districts. Advanced tickets are required and include Museum admission. Adults $22, seniors $20, students $15, free for members and children 17 and under. Seating in Calderwood Hall is first come, first served. Seating begins 45 minutes before the event. Late seating is not guaranteed.
Join The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for an evening of creativity and community in celebration of Where We Meet: Imagining Gardens and Futures (on view at Pao Arts Center, July 18 – October 10) and Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden (on view at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, June 26 – September 21).
Attendees will have the opportunity to select one workshop experience led by:
Erika Rumbly, Director of Horticulture at The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Sarah Hutt, Co-Coordinator on the Berkeley Community Garden Leadership Committee
Mel Taing, Where We Meet, exhibiting artist and Neighborhood Salon Luminary at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Yu-Wen Wu, Where We Meet, exhibiting artist and Artist-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner MuseumPao Arts Center and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum invite you to enjoy an evening of conversation, workshops, and food exploring themes of community, creativity, and urban gardening. The event will take place at the Pao Arts Center, 99 Albany Street in Boston, on August 14 from 6 - 8. Register at https://www.paoartscenter.org/events/wherewemeet-what-is-a-garden
Join Dr. Rocky Ruggiero for this extraordinary in-person event on October 17 where he will lead you through the extraordinary collection of Italian Renaissance art at the ISGM from 10:00 am – noon – WHILE IT IS CLOSED TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC! We shall have the entire museum to ourselves for most of our visit, and, in addition to works by Giotto, Raphael, Botticelli, Simone Martini and Titian, we shall enjoy works of art usually not accessible to groups by Piero della Francesca, Paolo Veronese and Fra Angelico. Experience the ISGM and one of the most important collections of Italian Renaissance art in the US like you never have before.
Lunch: Register for the bundle and join Dr. Rocky for a user-pay lunch at the New American Café at the MFA.
Dr. Rocky will then continue this in-person lecture tour from 2:30 – 4 with the great Italian Renaissance art treasures in the Museum of Fine Arts collection in Boston, MA, where he will examine works dating from the 14th through the 17th centuries by masters such as Duccio, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Titian, Rosso Fiorentino, Tintoretto, Canaletto and Tiepolo.
Rocky Ruggiero has been a professor of Art and Architectural History since 1999. He received his BA from the College of the Holy Cross and a Master of Arts degree from Syracuse University, where he was awarded a prestigious Florence Fellowship in 1996. He furthered his art historical studies at the University of Exeter, UK, where he received a Ph.D. in Art History and Visual Culture. In addition to lecturing for various American universities in Florence, Italy, including Syracuse, Kent State, Vanderbilt, and Boston College, Rocky has starred in various TV documentaries concerning the Italian Renaissance. He recently appeared as an expert witness for NBC News, as well as in the History Channel’s “Engineering an Empire: Da Vinci’s World” and “Museum Secrets: the Uffizi Gallery”, and the recent NatGeo/NOVA PBS program on Brunelleschi’s dome entitled “Great Cathedral Mystery.”
The bundle cost is $595, including admission. Register at www.rockyruggiero.com The group size is limited to 15 so early registration is highly recommended. Ask to be put on a wait list if necessary.
Join architects Joel Sanders, Sami Meylnas Sikanas, and activist Kimm Topping at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 28 at 7 pm as they discuss how inclusive design and the crafting of accessible public spaces embrace diverse gender and sexual identities in a conversation that redefines urban design beyond heteronormative boundaries.
The public realm has been historically conceived, constructed, and construed as heteronormative. The architectural and urban typologies of bathrooms, sports fields, and campuses have spatially reinforced strict gender binaries and prohibitions of various sexualities. More recently, the contemporary city has seen a growing discourse on design beyond its heteronormative origins. Queering Public Spaces convenes conversation on the role of design and planning in the curation of public spaces and landscapes that are accessible and welcoming to all, across the dynamic and vast spectrum of sexual and gender identities and lived experiences. The Larger Landscape Conversation is hosted by Gardner Museum Ruettgers Curator of Landscape and Harvard GSD Professor of Landscape ArchitectureCharles Waldheim.
Advanced tickets are required and include Museum admission. Adults $20, seniors $18, students $13, free for members and children 17 and under. Seating in Calderwood Hall is first come, first served. Seating begins 45 minutes before the event. Late seating is not guaranteed. To request accessible or wheelchair seating please call the box office at 617 278 5156. Register at https://www.gardnermuseum.org/calendar/larger-landscape-conversation-queering-public-spaces
While the temperatures drop outside, the Courtyard remains temperate with the green of ferns, and the sounds of water in the fountains. Tall, majestic calla lilies surround the Courtyard’s mosaic set off by unusual orchids, including exotic Paphiopedilum or slipper orchids with maroon and green flowers; Ansellia or leopard orchids sporting many clusters of yellow flowers with brown spots; and large, showy Phaius tankervilleae or nun’s cap orchids that have been grown in the Museum’s greenhouses since Isabella’s time. The orchids on display are native to Southeast Asia and Africa. Throughout the year, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s always-blooming Courtyard is transformed through a series of nine dramatic seasonal displays that reflect Isabella’s passion for gardens as well as the skill and dedication of the Museum’s horticulture staff. From bellflowers to nasturtiums to Japanese-style chrysanthemums, there’s always something new to discover thanks to the changing seasons and the rotation of plants. Most of the plants for the Courtyard are grown in the Museum’s temperature-controlled Hingham greenhouses and trucked to the Palace location, where they are rotated in to keep the displays in peak condition. For hours and complete information visit http://gardnermuseum.org
Plants provide a medium for the creative expression of individual identities, shared narratives, and collective memories, yet they are also inherently political, and never more so than in the midst of our rapidly warming climate. As changes to the climate become more volatile, how are designers, gardeners, and others who work directly with plants developing adaptive strategies to changes both environmental and social?
This September 14 conversation at 7 pm in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will convene landscape architect Rosetta S. Elkin of Pratt Institute, Stephanie Morningstar of the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, and Erika Rumbley, and the Gardner’s Stanley P. Kozak, Director of Horticulture, in dialogue with Charles Waldheim, the Gardner’s Ruettgers Curator of Landscape and Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Together they will consider the cultural, social, and political meanings of plants, and share approaches to adaptive strategies, particularly as these relate to seed-keeping and sharing. This program is organized in connection with the current exhibition Presence of Plants in Contemporary Art. Tickets may be purchased at https://www.gardnermuseum.org/calendar/seeding-change-politics-plants
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum presents a special exhibition through September 17 in all special exhibition galleries.
Presence of Plants in Contemporary Art features work by contemporary artists who practice with living plant material. These artworks invoke themes associated with the fragility of life, the impossibility of permanence, and the construction of personal meaning through memory. Rather than using nature as a subject for depiction—as occurs in traditional landscape painting—these artists incorporate and manipulate plant species to help us reflect on the meanings and associations that influence our relationship with the natural world.
For these internationally-recognized artists, plants provide a medium for expressing individual identities, shared narratives, and collective memories. From an image born of growing grass to a cinematic reflection on eco-queer themes, to a suspended vertical garden on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade, these thought-provoking and beautiful works mirror the transitory existence of the artists who cultivate them and the audiences that experience them.
Isabella Stewart Gardner constructed her art museum to center horticulture as a ‘living art,’ placing the blooming Courtyard at the heart of her galleries and cultivating numerous species of plants to establish a living collection that still exists today. This exhibition exemplifies the Gardner’s long tradition of interdisciplinary experience by uniting contemporary artistry with its horticultural and garden arts. This summer, join us to explore the emotional resonance and material expression of plants as art.
The exhibition highlights established works and site-specific installations from British team Ackroyd & Harvey; Welsh conceptual artist Cerith Wyn Evans; Los Angeles-based conceptual artist Piero Golia; Swedish artist Henrik Hakansson; and Brooklyn-based multi-media artist Rashid Johnson in the Hostetter Gallery. Johnson’s work – Antoine’s Organ (2016) – will be animated on weekdays and Thursday evenings with contemporary jazz piano improvisations. A film by Hong Kong-based video artist Zheng Bo is featured in the Fenway Gallery, and a new artistic commission by Natalie Jeremijenko on the theme of plants is presented on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade. Please note: The soil and other living materials on view in Presence of Plants in Contemporary Art will be composted at the end of the exhibition. As this phase of life ends, they will transform to support new growth.
As the ethics of the conservation field evolve, it has become increasingly important that we question what we are conserving, how, and for whom. Join Anya Dani, Director of Community Engagement and Inclusive Practice/Lecturer at the UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, as she discusses her efforts to create a decolonial, community-based framework for conservation in both Okinawa, Japan, and California. If our ultimate goal is the preservation of cultural heritage, then a more expansive view of conservation is needed to best serve the needs of diverse communities.
Speaker Anya Dani is an objects conservator with more than 20 years of experience working in the cultural heritage sector. She is currently the Director of Community Engagement and Inclusive Practice, Lecturer at the UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage.
This March 23 lecture in Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum begins at 7 pm. The lecture is the annual George L. Stout Memorial Lecture, held each year in honor of George L. Stout, the Museum’s Director from 1955 – 1970 and a founder of modern art conservation. Free for Museum members, $20 nonmembers, $18 Seniors, $13 Students, Children 7 – 17 free. Register at https://tnew.gardnermuseum.org/30900/30901
The Design of Disability convenes conversation on the design and planning of the public realm in relation to human capacities, civic aspirations, and bodily experience beyond access. This March 9 lecture in the Calderwood Hall at the Museum features Victor Calise, advocate for people with disabilities, author and professor Elizabeth Guffey, and artist and professor Sara Hendren.
The Larger Landscape Conversation is a recurring series at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that brings together visionaries across disciplines to discuss the intersection of creativity, lived experience, and social justice.
This program is moderated by Charles Waldheim, Ruettgers Curator of Landscape at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Advance tickets are required and include Museum admission. Adults $20, seniors $18, students $13, free for members and children 17 and under. Seating in Calderwood Hall is first come, first served. Seating begins 45 minutes before the event. Late seating is not guaranteed.
Call the Box Office at 617 278 5156, Wednesday-Monday, 10 am-4 pm*
Museum members free, Adults $20, Seniors $18, Students $13, children 7 – 17 free.
COVID-19 POLICY
Face masks, worn over the mouth and nose, are required for free and ticketed events in Calderwood Hall. In line with state and local guidance, we advise anyone who is unvaccinated, and encourage anyone who feels more comfortable, to wear a mask as they explore other areas of the museum.
ACCESSIBILITY
To request accessible or companion seating, or to inquire about other accommodations, please call the Box Office at 617 278 5156 in advance of the program.
