Compromise in Boston
At a Boston Museum, a Modern Addition Will Replace a Carriage House.
By Jason Edward Kaufman | Online Only | June 20, 2008
Historic postcard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston
Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum plans to break ground next year on a modernist building designed by Renzo Piano in the walled garden behind Fenway Court, the century-old residence and public gallery created by the collector and socialite who founded the institution.
The plan to alter one of the city's most cherished cultural landmarks has won widespread support, though some Bostonians object to the proposed demolition of a 1907 carriage house to make room for the Piano building, and court approval is required to cut a doorway through the rear wall of the original gallery building to create a new main entrance.
Gardner director Anne Hawley maintains that Piano, whose myriad museum commissions include a recent expansion of the landmark J.P. Morgan Library in New York City, has preserved the integrity of the complex by making a building deferential to the historic palace: "the respectful nephew to the great aunt," as he puts it. "If the museum does not do this project, it cannot survive for the next 100 years," Hawley says. "It's being loved to death."
Piano's new glass-and-steel structure will be about 62 feet tall, slightly shorter than the 1901 Venetian Renaissance-inspired stone palace that Mrs. Gardner designed with architect Willard Sears to display her collection of more than 2,500 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and decorative artworks, among them canvases by Botticelli, Raphael, Sargent, and Matisse. Piano's building will house conservation labs, a new greenhouse to grow plants for display in the palace courtyard, and living and studio space for resident artists. It also will contain a restaurant, shop, changing exhibition galleries, performance hall and offices, freeing up spaces in the palace currently dedicated to those services.
"Offloading these functions to another building will return the palace to what it should be: a gallery," says Hawley, adding that the tapestry room, which often has been filled with chairs for concerts, will be restored as it was in Mrs. Gardner's lifetime. Portions of Mrs. Gardner's fourth-floor apartment in the original building, now used as staff offices, will be vacated and refurbished for educational use and meeting space. And the long-term plan is to reassemble the lost Buddha Room, Mrs. Gardner's Asian-art-filled meditation chamber that in the 1970s was dismantled to provide space for the shop and café that now will become a lobby on the ground floor of the palace.
The Gardner Museum has secured endorsements from Boston mayor Thomas Menino, the city's Redevelopment Authority and Landmarks Commission, Boston Preservation Alliance, the Massachusetts Historical Commission, and the nearby Museum of Fine Arts (midway though its own $500 million expansion designed by Sir Norman Foster and scheduled to open in phases).
"The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is one of Boston's most treasured historic and cultural resources," says Sarah Kelly, executive director of the Boston Preservation Alliance. "The planned new building offers the potential to significantly reduce wear and tear on the Palace, to provide much-needed space for office and administrative functions, and to bring Mrs. Gardner's message to a broader and more diverse audience."
But some neighbors call the plan misguided and predict that the loss of the carriage house will be regretted. In the proposed design, visitors would have to pass through the Piano building and a glazed 50-foot-long walkway to enter the original gallery. And Boston architectural historian Steve Jerome argues that the carriage house, which Mrs. Gardner and her architect modeled on a medieval wall in Altamura in Italy, is integral to the Italophile character of Fenway Court and that its decorative facade should be preserved.
"The carriage house is an interesting building," concedes Mr. Piano, "but the preservation of the Gardner Museum, as an open civic place welcoming the public, is more important for the community and for the memory."
Hawley says the outbuilding, which has been used for storage and a visiting-artist apartment, "was never public and never part of the visitor experience" and is not protected by Mrs. Gardner's 1924 will. "It's not a terribly good building," she adds, dismissing the notion of saving its ornate exterior as costly "facadism."
Wendy Nicholas, director of the Northeast Office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, finds their arguments persuasive. "The Boston Preservation Alliance and the Boston Landmarks Commission have been working with the museum, its architects, and neighborhood groups over some time on these restoration and expansion plans. At this time, it is felt that a compromise with the greatest public benefit has been achieved. While the loss of the carriage house is not ideal, the benefits of the museum's plan--for the long-term preservation of the palace, grounds, and collections and for the broader community--are most compelling. We chose to embrace the museum's plans."
At least one legal hurdle remains. Cutting through the back of the museum to create the link to the new building would require moving an interior sculptural ensemble, and because the Gardner will stipulates that the galleries remain as she left them, those sculptures may not be moved without permission from the state attorney general and probate court. The museum has filed papers with the attorney general, but a court hearing has not been scheduled. A local preservation group, Friends of Historic Mission Hill, is considering petitioning the court to participate in the proceeding, and the Boston Landmarks Commission also will have a say in the final design.
But with philanthropic support on the museum's side, the plan appears headed for approval. Hawley is confident she can raise the necessary funds in a campaign that she estimates will seek $165 million, including new construction, renovation work on the palace, and $45 million for endowment. (The estimates will be revised as the design is completed.) The board of trustees, led by Gardner president Barbara Hostetter, has yet to officially launch the fundraising drive.
Jason Edward Kaufman is chief U.S. correspondent for The Art Newspaper.
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