For my birthday, my husband surprised me with a trip to one of my local favorite museums -The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (you see why I married him!).

The Gardner’s latest exhibit Off the Wall is billed as “up close and well lit, twenty-five masterpieces come to life in a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition.” It was quite a treat to really experience some of my favorite paintings in a different space, but it was also weird. Weird, in the sense, that part of the magic of the Gardner Museum is the devil may care curating that Mrs. Jack (as Isabella Stewart Gardner was known to her friends) orchestrated when she conceived her museum in 1896. In fact, her will/trust stipulates that all the art work must remain exactly as Isabella arranged it. When the new wing was built, the court-allowed one deviation from Isabella Stewart Gardner’s will. It involved repositioning only one object — a sarcophagus — which was slightly shifted to create the passageway from new wing to the old.

During this visit, I was thrilled to learn that visitors now are free to photograph (sans flash) the interior of the museum courtyard and galleries. This was a HUGE change, in the past I witnessed museum security immediately approach anyone who even touched their mobile device and sternly told them to put it away.

Below are some of my favorite views from my visit:

I am a great admirer of Mrs. Jack. She was one of the foremost female patrons of the arts. She was a supporter and friend of leading artists and writers of her time, including John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, and Henry James. She was an ardent fan of the Boston Symphony, the Red Sox, and Harvard College football. Isabella Stewart Gardner was also the visionary creator of what remains one of the most remarkable and intimate collections of art in the world today. She was unconventional and unafraid to live her life on her own terms.

Some of my favorite Mrs. Jack stories:

• She once shocked all of Boston Society by showing up to the Boston Symphony Orchestra bearing a headband that declared, “Oh you Red Sox.”
• She hosted a boxing match at her home and, while the men fought, she danced.
• At the opening of her museum, she served Boston high society a menu of champagne and donuts.
• She had two large diamonds fastened to springs and wore them like antennae.
• Her motto was “Win as though you were used to it, and lose as if you like it.”
• A devout woman, she requested in her will that the Cowley Fathers celebrate an annual Memorial Requiem Mass for the Repose of her Soul in the museum chapel. This duty is now performed each year on her birthday.
• Speaking of birthdays, if it is your special day when you visit the museum, admission is FREE. (Admission is always free if your name is ISABELLA)

I had a wonderful visit and eagerly await the return of The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt’s only known seascape. If you have any information, contact the FBI.