Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner by Natalie Dykstra

Isabella loyalists will have a front row seat to an afternoon with Natalie Dykstra, author of Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner. Nathaniel Silver, Associate Director and Chief Curator at the Gardner, will introduce the author —who will read passages from her book—and facilitate a Q&A and book signing. Copies of her book will be available for purchase at the event, or you can reserve your copy in advance and receive a free Gardner tote bag and book mark!* 

There are no longer tickets available for this event but you can still purchase a copy of Natalie's book here.  

This event does not include gallery admission. If you would like to visit the galleries, tickets are available here.  

*This promotion is exclusive to those purchasing the book with their reservation to the event through the ticketing link above. 

An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner illuminates the fascinating ways the Museum and its holdings can be seen as a kind of memoir, dazzling and haunting, created with objects instead of words and displayed per Isabella’s wishes in the exact placements she initially curated. 

Born in 1840 to a privileged New York family, Isabella married Boston Brahmin Jack Gardner as she turned twenty. She was misunderstood by Boston’s insular society and suffered the death of her only child, a beloved boy, not yet two years old. 

But in time came friendships, glittering and bohemian; awe-inspiring world travels; and collecting beautiful things with a keen eye and competitive pace—all these were balm for loss. Henry James and John Singer Sargent—whose portrait of Isabella was a masterpiece and a scandal—came to recognize her originality. Bernard Berenson, leading connoisseur of the Italian Renaissance, was her art dealer.

Reserve your copy of the book with your ticket and you'll receive a free Gardner tote bag and book mark! We will have your purchase ready for you to pick up from our Bertucci Education Studio when the event starts.