Upcoming Exhibitions

The Gardner Museum offers new special exhibitions each season. Schedules are subject to change. All press inquiries should be submitted to press@isgm.org

Fall 2023

Inventing Isabella
Hostetter Gallery | October 19, 2023 - January 15, 2024

An air of mystery surrounded Isabella Stewart Gardner, as did a reputation for defying the expectations of her gender and class. Isabella used the visual media of her day-art, fashion, and photography- to carefully navigate the boundary between her private identity and public image. From a formidable figure clad in black in Sargent's controversial portrait, to a veiled person in many personal photographs, to a touching watercolor that shows vulnerability two years before her death, this exhibition traces and analyzes the complex image of a legendary woman.

Fabiola Jean-Louis: Rewriting History
Fenway Gallery | October 19, 2023 - January 15, 2024

Multifaceted paper and conceptual artist and Gardner Artist-in-Residence, Fabiola Jean-Louis (b. 1978, Haiti), presents selections from her series Rewriting History. On view will be a period gown fashioned from paper and in the style worn by female European nobility. Accompanying painterly photographs feature women of color wearing these elaborate paper dresses, including one of a woman wearing the same garment that is on display. Upon close inspection, many of these images evoking nobility also include depictions of racial violence—alluding to the racist power structures that long upheld elite European classes. Of the work, the artist says, “Through the materials, I suggest that although we cannot change the past, we can act to change the present as we activate the memories, visions, and legacies of our ancestors.”

Carla Fernández: Tradition is Not Static 
A newly-commissioned work on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade | October 3, 2023 - February 6, 2024

Winter/Spring 2024

Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West All Special Exhibition Galleries | February 15 - May 12, 2024

Summer 2024

On Christopher Street: Transgender Portraits by Mark Seliger Hostetter and Fenway Galleries | June 13 - September 8, 2024