Inventing Isabella
Throughout history, there have been women who defied expectations, and dared to be different. Join us as we explore how art, fashion, and photography shaped their personas and identities.
Isabella Stewart Gardner used art, fashion, and photography to cultivate her image. Though her name is on the Museum she founded, Isabella remains an enigmatic figure. As someone who often defied the expectations of her gender and class, many stories, scandals, and myths surrounded her during her lifetime and still do today.
Inventing Isabella unites many pictures of Isabella鈥攆rom formal oil paintings to informal drawings and personal and press photographs鈥攖hat Isabella chose to preserve. Combined with select examples of her clothing and jewelry, we see how Isabella fashioned herself and entered long and intricate collaborations with artists to craft her public image. In conjunction with Inventing Isabella, the Museum will also showcase the work of two contemporary artists, Fabiola Jean-Louis: Rewriting History and Carla Fern谩ndez: Tradition is not Static.
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Throughout history, there have been women who defied expectations, and dared to be different. Join us as we explore how art, fashion, and photography shaped their personas and identities.
Isabella Stewart Gardner used art, fashion, and photography to cultivate her image. Though her name is on the Museum she founded, Isabella remains an enigmatic figure. As someone who often defied the expectations of her gender and class, many stories, scandals, and myths surrounded her during her lifetime and still do today.
Inventing Isabella unites many pictures of Isabella鈥攆rom formal oil paintings to informal drawings and personal and press photographs鈥攖hat Isabella chose to preserve. Combined with select examples of her clothing and jewelry, we see how Isabella fashioned herself and entered long and intricate collaborations with artists to craft her public image. In conjunction with Inventing Isabella, the Museum will also showcase the work of two contemporary artists, Fabiola Jean-Louis: Rewriting History and Carla Fern谩ndez: Tradition is not Static.
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This Fall, Inventing Isabella at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum explores how the Museum鈥檚 founder leveraged art, fashion and photography to shape her identity and cultivate her public persona.
An exhibit looking at how the museum鈥檚 namesake fashioned her own mystique pairs with two new shows exploring intersections of history, identity, power, and culture.
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