Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner
FAIN: FZ-261482-18
Natalie Anne Dykstra
Hope College (Holland, MI 49423-3663)
Research and writing leading to publication of a biography of Boston art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924).
My project is a biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924), the Boston doyenne and art collector, whose eponymous museum opened in 1903. Gardner’s personal story has been eclipsed by the fame of her many masterpieces, though it powerfully resonates with contemporary issues of class, American identity, here and abroad, and women and power. It is also an intimate story of a late bloomer, an American life remade by a passion for beauty and art.