Don't Lick the Manet

Every so often you see a news item about someone attempting to damage or deface a great work of art in a museum. In January two women hurled pumpkin soup at the Mona Lisa, on display at The Louvre in Paris. The women were from an environmental activist group called Riposte Alimentaire, a collective protesting food instability. Wasting a perfectly good can of pumpkin soup might not be the best way to get your message across. Da Vinci’s most iconic work is tucked behind a glass case on the wall and there is also a railing barrier in front of the wall, making proximity to the painting a real challenge. I feel like this wasn’t maybe the best thought through plan from whomever is calling the shots at Riposte. They might have had better luck drawing boobs on a Banksy.

I don’t understand whatever is behind the impulse to maim art for political reasons. It feels like a misplaced crime opportunity. Why not road trip through Alabama and see how many Confederate flags you can shred? That seems like a much better use of your time and bail money. Big, institutionalized museums like The Louvre, the Tate in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York are not without their social and cultural headaches. They ruthlessly exclude individual artists and artistic communities; their vetting and curation processes are more mysterious and contentious than choosing an Oscar winner; and they have not always acquired items through ethical means, i.e. pilferers gotta be pilfering! But they are also some of the only places to see centuries old masterpieces or other astonishing materials like Egyptian sarcophagi and pottery unearthed from the same ancient civilization that gave us Keith Richards. Museums kind of have us by the short and curlies, and I think they know it.

When I was in Chicago this past fall my friend Julie and I visited The Art Institute, which is one of the country’s finest art museums and a personal favorite. One of the most stunning works is by the Impressionist-era painter, George Seurat titled A Sunday on La Grande Jatte--1884. It depicts people enjoying an idyllic day on this small park set on an island in the Seine. The painting is done in the pointillist style—painting closely positioned dots together to form the image, like painting in pixels. The work is impressive for all sorts of reasons—the style and technique, the scene itself, the sheer size; it’s ten feet long and six feet high, taking up an entire wall in one gallery. Even more startling, to me at least, there is nothing separating the painting from the rest of us plebian museum visitors but a lone security guard who periodically cycles in and out of the room, leaving the painting completely exposed for a full 60 to 90 seconds. Anyone who has spent time with a baby or toddler knows that 60 seconds is enough time to fall off a table, eat an entire lightbulb, and start a fire with five seconds to spare.

Julie and I stood back and watched, both horrified and fascinated, by every third or fourth person who would wait for the guard to leave or seem distracted. They’d casually walk over to the informational plaque by the wall and pretend to read it. Then the person would either try to stick their face close to the canvas to see the individual dots of paint or turn so that they were practically shoulder to shoulder with the frame and then raise their phone for a selfie. If the guard caught them, she’d raise her voice: “STEP AWAY from the painting PLEASE.” Everything about her tone said the “please” was an HR formality. For someone who carries around enough left-over Catholic guilt, I found the rule flaunting audacious. I worried less about the random political agitator than I did about the high probability someone was going to lose their balance and crash into the painting, ruining it for the rest of us. And then the museum would win, smirking, “See? This is why you can’t have nice things. RELEASE THE HOUNDS!”

I was reminded what else a museum could be when I recently visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which is someone’s home. Gardner was a wealthy nineteenth-century Bostonian who became a prominent philanthropist as well as a lifelong collector and patron of the arts. She lived the dream: she had so much beautiful stuff—paintings, tapestries, sculpture, furniture, textiles, books—scooped up from all over the world that she had to build a dedicated place to hold most of it. That space was a mansion, opened to the public in 1903. Three floors encompassed rooms brimming with Gardner’s treasures where she would also host concerts and other events, the fourth floor were her private living quarters. I could only imagine what it was like for her to pass by an actual Rembrandt every morning on her way to get coffee and pick up the newspaper.

The centerpiece of the home museum is a grand courtyard designed in the Venetian Gothic Revival style that was popular in the late-nineteenth century. Gardner had taken many trips to Italy. She worked closely and a little obsessively with her builders and the primary architect on every detail from the type of stone to the cut of window to the placement of the tiled stairs. The courtyard also serves as a beautiful greenhouse kind of space; different varieties of flowers bloom year round. But the big show in the courtyard happens in April when museum horticulturalists install luxurious Nasturtiums. An annual tradition for Gardner’s birthday that dates back over a century, the flowers unfurl in 20-foot coils punctuated by fragrant, jewel-toned orange flowers. They only last for about two weeks. I think they are worth the wait and the effort to go see them.

Talk about your room with a view. ©SheilaMoeschenPhotography

That is serious architectural bling! ©SheilaMoeschenPhotography

The rest of the museum is full of Gardner’s beloved finds—manuscripts, paintings, rare coins, antique furniture, tapestries, sculptures, antiquarian books, musical instruments, stained glass panels—arranged in each room to make it feel lived in. It’s such a different way of experiencing art than at a place like The Museum of Fine Arts just a few blocks from the Gardner. Sure there are discrete cards near chairs that date back to the 1600s that state “Please Do Not Sit,” but other than that and a few loosely roped off sections near large pieces of furniture, there is not a lot keeping visitors at bay and everyone seemed cool. I didn’t notice anyone laying down by a table to take a selfie or trying to lick a Manet. It’s almost as if Isabella Stewart Gardner decided that the point of having all these beautiful things was to share them in a way that would bring people closer to wonder and awe, to make you feel at home.

The Gardner Museum is featured in my upcoming book, Beyond Boston: Discovering Cities, Harbors, and Country Charms (publishing August 2024), as one of the unique day destinations around Boston and in outlying New England areas. You can read more about the history of the museum and Isabella’s fascinating story there. Pre-orders for the book are available HERE and through your favorite bookseller.