While museums around the world are shuttered due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Apollo’s usual weekly pick of exhibition openings will be replaced by a selection of digital initiatives providing virtual access to art and culture.
In its efforts to reach audiences during lockdown, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston has gone (relatively) old school, launching its new blog: Inside the Collection. The idiosyncratic story of the museum – housed in the former residence of its founder and namesake, who stipulated that nothing about the collection or the galleries be changed after her death – means that there is plenty of material to write about. Short articles by curators, conservators and other staff members explore this story via particular items in the collection and archives: for example, the uniform designed by Joseph Lindon Smith for Teobaldo Travi, a building contractor from Italy who was appointed as the museum’s ‘majordomo’ (chief supervisor) by Gardner herself. Other subjects include a 19th-century cup and saucer currently undergoing conservation, a medieval doorway, and a snake sarcophagus. Visit the blog to learn more.
Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary here
Teobaldo Travi in the North Cloister, Fenway Court (1904), Thomas E. Marr and Son. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Cup and saucer (1884), Minton Ceramics Manufactory. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston