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Holiday Display
Michele Iodice, Artist-in-Residence
November 22, 2005–January 8, 2006
The annual display in the museum’s Dutch Room has been a seasonal evocation of elegant turn-of-the-century dining. This year Italian artist and set designer Michele Iodice has provided a new way of considering this aspect of Mrs. Gardner’s legacy.
When Isabella Stewart Gardner invited friends and renowned guests for New Year's Eve or other festivities, as she often did, she took special care and pleasure in shaping a collective memory. A collective memory can result from an extraordinary once-in-a-lifetime event, or, on the contrary, from a traditional dinner where friends and relatives gather together each year with the happy expectation of finding the familiar rituals and flavors of home.
For such occasions, Mrs. Gardner perhaps used to pick domestic objects from her house, as though they were flowers in a field, and transform them into something completely different. This year, we follow suit: the beautiful mosaic from Villa Livia in the Courtyard takes flight to the Dutch Room to become a tablecloth, at which to feast in the company of wonderful objects and sculptures collected from different corners of the house. This is playing with history—in this case, the history of Ancient Rome. Objects have been selected and displaced from their domestic setting, new invented objects have been added as well. And in their juxtapositions to one another, they are sure to surprise and be remembered by the guests of the museum.
Artist-in-Residence Michele Iodice is a working sculptor, installation artist, and set designer. He currently lives and works in Naples, where he is also a museum educator at the Museo Archelogico Nazionale di Napoli. Iodice has designed many exhibitions and museum installations for museums in Naples, and is well known for his original table installations and set designs.
Photos by Clements/Howcroft.
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