At the opening of the Museum in 1903, and for concerts in the early years, this room was used as the men’s cloakroom. Many of the objects displayed here retain a connection with music, while most of the paintings belong to the era of the Museum’s founding. For the first visitors, this was a space of the modern world, while the galleries beyond were devoted to the past.

In 2009, the Gardner Museum’s comprehensive new lighting project attempted to use natural light from the windows more effectively while adding artificial light to allow paintings and sculpture to be seen properly. In the Yellow Room, unsightly track lighting was removed. New lighting fixtures boost the ambient light of the room without destroying its sense of mystery. In addition, new screens and shades allow more daylight to enter the room.

Equally important to the refurbishment of the Yellow Room was the replacement of the wall fabric that gives the room its name. In 1974, the walls were covered with a dull cotton textile. Luckily, the Museum possessed a piece of the original silk fabric used by Isabella Gardner in 1902: the original color and sheen of this sample had not faded. This late 18th-century silk was carefully duplicated; the color of the original yellow was matched to the original. The result is a shimmering room that captures light in varying ways.

The fabric was hung to Isabella Gardner’s original scheme, which varied in alignment and at one point even turned the design 90 degrees. This eccentric method of installation creates a patchwork effect, perhaps to suggest a room already worn by time. It is a method of decoration than can be seen throughout Gardner’s Museum, where arrangements are never perfectly neat or symmetrical.

The edges of the wall fabric are decorated with trims and cords—these too have been reproduced from Isabella Gardner’s original patterns. Several paintings in the gallery have been conserved for this project, including works by Joseph Lindon Smith and Edgar Degas. Small adjustments were made to the height of the paintings to return the arrangement to its original appearance. Similarly, the display of porcelain now also follows Gardner’s design. These subtle changes add up to a gallery that closely resembles Isabella Gardner’s original intention.

The Yellow Room displays art of the 19th century. In 1903, when the Museum first opened, the gallery must have seemed part of the modern world, especially in contrast with the ancient and Renaissance treasures that fill the rest of the Museum. It was an introduction to the remainder of the building, and for special concerts it functioned as the men’s cloakroom, complete with a functioning toilet.

The room possesses a great deal of music memorabilia, from musical instruments to photographs of famous singers and programs of concerts held at the Museum. The Yellow Room also presents a veritable history of 19th-century painting. Beginning with a watercolor by J. M. W. Turner, the visitor can see Barbizon School works, and paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, and Degas. Culminating this sequence is a painting by Henri Matisse, the first to enter an American museum.