Description: One of 19th-century America's most fascinating and eccentric women, Isabella Gardner became muse and mentor to musicians, painters, writers, and scholars such as Henry James, Henry Adams, John Singer Sargent, Lady Gregory, Bernard Berenson, Elsie de Wolfe, T.S. Eliot, and Paul Manship, and involved herself with the newly emerging Irish Catholic, Jewish, feminist, gay, and African-American communities. The climax of her life came after the death of her beloved husband in 1898 when, to contain her world-famous art collection, she designed and built a Venetian palazzo in Boston, where she lived and entertained and which stands today as the ultimate triumph of her remarkable life.
-- The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston attracts nearly 150,000 visitors each year.

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