With AL in town from LA, I decided to join her in some sightseeing in my own city. I tagged along to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, wanting to find some inspiration. So glad I did. This gem in the city seems to attract women of all ages who are looking for a little bit of inspiration.
Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) was a philanthropist, traveler, and lover of the arts-- in addition to being independently wealthy.
This was a woman who was traveling to places as far away as Turkey and Japan in the late 1800's. With her money, she filled her house with art and designs from her travels around the world, and the result is an amazing 3-story house, centered with a Mediterranean oasis-like courtyard, and decorated with collections from her travels from around the world. She was even hosting concerts in her home and entertaining friends like famous painter John Singer Sargent.
The entire experience was so charming, it was easy to feel enchanted by the Mediterranean vibe, the beautiful works of art, the mystique of this charismatic woman and her famous friends, and the worldliness of her life and being.
I was like a am with a belly full of a meal from a sufficiently hole-in-the-wall restaurant well-reviewed on a prominent restaurant review site.
Full on the idea of what society says is charming, socially beneficent, and also beautiful? I was, shamelessly so.
But perhaps that's only because society says that ISG's house is all those wonderful things today. In society then, how many other women philanthropists were there? It seems like ISG did something before it was a thing-- creating a museum of her house, from of her travels-- as a woman-- around the world.
The experience enchanted me enough to remind me to always foster my hobbies and passions. I got the inspiration I was looking for. And beyond that, it also inspired me to even do the things that don't even really exist as things today... no matter how weird, dorky, cooky, or awfully bad I am at them.
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