Word: gardners
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Visitors sense this cult, too--partly because the museum displays three portraits of Mrs. Gardner. In one she appears veiled and quiet--the scholar, the patron of the arts. In another painting across the same room, Mrs. Gardner seems about to sweep forward, her arms gracefully extended...
When Mrs. Gardner began a formal collection, she approached the project with characteristic energy. Bernard Berenson, whom she had helped while he was an undergraduate at Harvard, supervised acquisitions--but Mrs. Gardner made many important decisions herself. Considering Venice her second home, she carefully planned the details of her own Venetian palace. She revised the architect's plans for the foundation. She supervised the workmen--who had been specially imported from Italy for the project. (In fact, the walls of the court are not really pink marble: Mrs. Gardner's attempt to correct the painters produced that effect...
...elaborate, opening of the museum reflected Mrs. Gardner's love of ceremony. No newsmen had been allowed in, so curiosity ran high. On New Year's Eve 1903, Mrs. Gardner finally welcomed a few friends into her mansion. They rose to greet her as she sat on a balcony above the court. Then there was a concert by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra...
...Gardner died 21 years after this ceremony--but her cult has grown. The museum guards uphold it. Of course, they are so old that I suspect that Mrs. Gardner selected and stationed them as carefully as she planned the inanimate objects of the museum. When these guards speak of "her," Mrs. Gardner seems very alive...
...third portrait, the notorious Sargent showing her in a very low cut black dress, that is the most characteristic. Upset at the comments the dress caused, Mr. Gardner asked his wife to hide the picture during his lifetime; she agreed. After his death, however, she put it prominently in a corner of the Gothic Room and the picture remains there. Her stately figure rising against a red and gold tapestry, Mrs. Gardner gazes out on the museum she so carefully created...