GARDNER MUSEUM EXPANSION APPROVED
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s trustees voted unanimously yesterday to proceed with a new building designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano—a plan that has stirred up opponents, including museum employees, who want a carriage house at the back of the museum preserved, according to the Boston Globe.
The purpose of the construction project is to relieve pressure on the existing building, which houses a shop, a café, performance space, and offices. The plan calls for demolition of the carriage house, erected by Gardner in 1907. The museum building opened in 1903. It became a focal point of debate last week, when several staff members and experts associated with the museum suggested it may have been more central to Gardner’s vision than the museum’s leadership had realized or acknowledged. They cited a recent essay by Robert Colby, a former curatorial fellow at the museum with a Ph.D. in Renaissance art history from London’s Courtauld Art Institute.
The Gardner Museum’s director, Anne Hawley, said Colby’s essay, which built on research published by former director Rollin Hadley in 1978, contained nothing new. But Trevor Fairbrother, a freelance curator and former staffer at the Museum of Fine Arts, wrote in a letter obtained by the Globe_ that Colby’s findings “make it certain that the Carriage House . . . constituted a key element in the founder’s vision of Fenway Court.”
A statement from the museum said the board recognized the museum had met “a critical internal benchmark in its capital fundraising.” It said the vote marked “the final formal approval the museum needs.” “This project is first and foremost about preserving the palace and the collection,” John Lowell Gardner, chairman of the board of trustees and great-grand-nephew of Isabella Gardner, said in a prepared statement. “This project is a harmonious marriage of preservation and progress.” The museum has not disclosed the project’s cost, but it has been reported to be in excess of one hundred million dollars.
