The Memory Palace of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

A fascinating meditation on art and personality, Patricia Vigdermans exploration of Isabella Stewart Gardners famous Boston museum radiates out from its subject to investigate Gardners legacy of luxury and willfulness. Isabella Gardners high spirits and aesthetic pleasure, her women friends and female power, her friendships with the adventurers and aesthetes of her world, are gathered into this engrossing investigation of patronage and passion. Blending biography, memoir, philosophy, and detective story, The Memory Palace is more than a tribute to the museum and the woman; it is an altogether new genre. Vigdermans witty and intimate quest for her subject sets a literary precedent for the appreciation of artistic imagination. Loosening up the past, entering its mysteries and its memories, she reminds us that we change our lives when we begin a relationship with art. This e-book edition includes a special Gardner Museum / Memory Palace tour of the fifty objects Vigderman takes inspiration from.