Correspondences

This is an image of the various sketches and letters addressed to Isabella. Stewart Gardner, which she kept and then preserved in the musuem.  

These letters and sketches can be found on the third floor of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. This is the last floor that is accessible to the general public. They are in what is known as the Long Gallery, which is a passageway lined with rare books, sculptures, Renaissance paintings, Gothic furtinure, and personal letters and photographs. 

The room holds the air of ancient wealth and knowledge, some subtle but indisputable power. These specific letters and sketches are arranged in glass casing near one of the windows looking down into the arboretum's courtyard. They are spead out among other similar archived documents. Pictured here are a letter from Paul Chalfin, a famous artist and interior designer, and sketches James Abbott McNeill Whistler, a famous artist, sent to Gardner a few years later by Whistler's friend, another artist named Harper Pennington. They're dated between  the years of 1904 and 1905. 

These whispers of the past are so specific to Isabella Stewart Gardner. In instances like this, it is no longer about the artist but rather the curator. The sketches, for example, in the right-hand corner of the photograph, are addressed to Gardner from James Abott McNiel Whistler, a famous American painter. Whistler attached a letter, also pictured above, proclaiming “Really, dear Lady, you make too much of  my small contributions to your wonderful collection. It was a pleasure”. The touch of acquaintance that accompanies so many of these pieces of art transforms the entire museum into something that is deeply personal. There are also letters from John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn, as well as many other artists, in this public collection. 

The preservation of Gardner’s own personal correspondences just further demonstrates the duality of the museum, both private and public; individual as well as collective. It shows the act of immortalizing, of preserving beautiful things, as a shared process. The artists creates, but someone else must be there to perpetuate the public life and memory of the beauty.