Free First Thursday — July 3, 2025
Thursday
July 3, 2025
3 - 9 pm
Throughout the Museum
On this Free First Thursday, escape into a garden unlike any other with our just-opened summer exhibition Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden, which features large-scale, playful sculptures of fruits, seeds, and hybrid plants. Then, dig into the roots of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s cross-pollination of art and horticulture in Flowers for Isabella in the Fenway Gallery. Cool down in the Courtyard, filled with the refreshing hues of Summer Blues, while enjoying artist Lee Mingwei’s soundscape Small Conversation that fills the space with the melodies of crickets, cicadas, and frogs.
And if you’re keeping an eye out for public art, look up! Yu-Wen Wu’s Reigning Beauty, 2025 crowns the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade and is featured as part of the Boston Public Art Triennial. Café G is open late for dinner and drinks, and be sure to shop at the treasure trove that is Gift at the Gardner.
Calderwood Hall and the Bertucci Education Studio will not be open on July 3rd.
Free First Thursdays
Advance registration is encouraged for free timed entry tickets for Museum general admission.
Registration opens two weeks before the event for the general public and four weeks in advance for members. Reserve your tickets online by clicking the button above.
Limited tickets will be available in-person at the Museum’s main entrance, starting at 3 pm, the day of the event. Please note that day-of tickets are not guaranteed.
Questions about accessibility? Please call the box office at 617 278 5156.
Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden and Yu-Wen Wu: Reigning Beauty, 2025 are supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Amy and David Abrams, the Barr Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, Wagner Foundation, the Barbara Lee Program Fund, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Fredericka and Howard Stevenson, and Yuchun and Agustina Lee.
Flowers for Isabella is supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Amy and David Abrams, the Barr Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, Wagner Foundation, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Fredericka and Howard Stevenson, Yuchun and Agustina Lee, and by an endowment grant from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Yu-Wen Wu: Reigning Beauty, 2025, is featured as part of the Boston Public Art Triennial 2025.
The Artist-in-Residence program is supported in part by Lizbeth and George Krupp and directed by Pieranna Cavalchini, Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art. Funding is also provided for site-specific installations of new work on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade on Evans Way.
Free days are supported in part by the Wallace Minot Leonard Foundation, the Board of Advisors 2022 Fund for Access, and Thomas G. Stemberg Charitable Foundation.
The Museum receives operating support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
