The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is bound by its creator, ISG’s decree in her will, to its role of being a “…Museum for the education and enjoyment of the public forever”. This intention was reconfirmed in the Museum’s 2019-2024 Strategic Plan, Renewing the Promise: For the Public Forever. The institutional looking backward (legacy), and projecting forward (vision), is further articulated in the current Plan’s four Core Values: Creativity is our legacy, Community is our purpose, The Collection is our catalyst, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are our commitments.

Perhaps there is an additional, unacknowledged intention of this sacred place – the empathy with which Isabella Stewart Gardner shared her life and grief. For those who have eyes to see, her tragic losses are ubiquitous in her collection. In the very act of the bestowing the museum she chose to model resilience, fortitude, and the possibility of transformative meaning making.

Beginning with the loss of her little sister when she was just 14, through unfathomable child loss (still birth, miscarriage, the death of her only biological son at almost two, and infertility), and in the early passing of her husband and so many family members – two who died by suicide, Isabella experienced grief upon grief. She was intensely private regarding those sorrows, choosing to mark those events and anniversaries in solitude. Yet, her very real and personal losses are, literally, built into her life’s work.

ISG’s gift, even beyond “education and enjoyment”, is empathy. Even coded, Fenway Court is an invitation to community, beauty, respite, and hope amidst the memorials. Implicit in the generous gift of this museum for us, the public, is an invitation to the spirit of redemption with which it was given. As much as she created this extraordinary place, in part to immortalize her loves, she knew we all need it too.

…a Museum for the education and enjoyment of the public forever...

~The last will and testament of Isabella Stewart Gardner