Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden
Flowers for Isabella
Yu-Wen Wu: Reigning Beauty, 2025
This summer, imagination takes root at the Gardner Museum in a lush, multisensory exploration of gardens as sites of creativity and connection. Step into the Hostetter Gallery and be transported to a playful space of wonder with Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden, which features large-scale sculptures that challenge our conception of gardens as natural spaces. In the Fenway Gallery, dig into the roots of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s cross-pollination of art and horticulture in Flowers for Isabella. Just steps away, artist Lee Mingwei’s soundscape Small Conversation fills the Museum Courtyard with the melodies of crickets, cicadas, and frogs. And above our own gardens on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade, Yu-Wen Wu pays homage to the fleeting beauty of nature with Reigning Beauty— also featured as a part of this summer’s inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial 2025.
Image Credits
Denman Waldo Ross, (American, 1853 – 1935), Peonies, about 1919. Oil on canvas board. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Ming Fay (American, 1942 – 2025), Close Up of Itchy Ball. The Estate of Ming Fay
Yu-Wen Wu, Reigning Beauty, 2025 [rendering] ©Yu-Wen Wu. Photo: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
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.
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.
