Subtitle: Stop the Gardner expansion!

Sebastian Smee writes an excellent call for the trustees of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston to think again before the continue with their plans for an ultra-modern expansion by Renzo Piano. (This article struck me like a thunderbolt. Too bad the title of it doesn't match Smee's impassioned plea. My subtitle would be better.)

Just as it did in her day, Gardner's palace museum still invites us to turn our back on the driving rationalism of modern life: on standardization, on uniform lighting, on the rush to embrace the new. We are invited to enter through an exterior that is deliberately reserved and opaque, whereupon we find ourselves in the most extraordinary sanctuary - a place of mystery and medievalism, of marvels and eccentricities: a jumble of anachronisms that bizarrely combines aspects of a Venetian palazzo, an enclosed medieval garden, and a monastic cloister.

That is about to change.

I love the old museums that do not look like cafeterias. My favorites have been the Gardner, the Morgan Library, and the Barnes. Are you seeing a pattern? All three of these museums have felt the need to accommodate the rush of visitors and all three have turned to architectural schemes that destroyed the special character that made them, well, special. Two of them are even using the same architect (Piano, who is actually great when he's not making high-end malls for the viewing of art).

I'm hoping the Gardner caretakers can find a different solution.