Isabella Stewart Gardner

But the other piece is people wanna go, just like, uh, film tourism, they wanna go to a place that, you know, where, where a, a book was set and learn about that book.

And I know, you know, we have a lot of fantastic books with Isabella Stewart Gardner's been the topic of several books, Lioness and a couple of others, where, you know, so many Boston neighborhoods and scenes are featured.

So what does that look like for you all at the book festival, and, you know, have you given much thought to how we can kind of collaborate on a literary tourism situation here in Boston?

I feel like there's so much to think about here.

Yeah.

I- my mind is racing just think- you know, if...

I, I believe The Fairmont is featured as a, it was diff- it was a different, it wasn't a hotel back then, but in Lioness, about Isabella Stewart Gardner, and, you know, we had read it here, and I'm thinking, "Wow, w- wouldn't it be fun to use that as a theme book, invite people to travel to Boston, and then go through the museum and pick out, you know, some of the pieces that are mentioned in the, in the book?" But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself, but-

There's some good ways, yeah

Despite a $10 million reward, decades of FBI work, and tips funneled in from informants across three separate mob families, not a single one of those pieces has ever turned back up.

Isabella Stewart Gardner was a Bostonian by marriage and a New Yorker by birth, an heiress with a sharp eye and a sharper personality.

She spent the late 19th century traveling Europe and acquiring whatever caught her attention.

Vermeers, Rembrandts, Botticellis, Titians.

But really – Ideas come through consuming other art and inspiration.

And then just one trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner or the Museum of Fine Arts or anything like that, I come home with a thousand new ideas.

So we have to actually make a practice of watching documentaries, consuming art in every form.

Don't limit it to woodworking.

Let's talk about a palace in the swamp.

Let's talk about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Now, to understand the chill of this tale, you have to understand the woman who built the house.

Isabella Stewart Gardner was a wealthy, eccentric widow who traveled the world buying up the finest art humanity ever produced.

In the late eighteen hundreds, she decided to build a proper home for her treasures.

She constructed a breathtaking four-story Venetian palace right in the middle of Boston Fens, a patch of reclaimed marshland.

They couldn't put new paintings in their place.

They had to leave them exactly where they hung, and they're still there today, friend.

I've done a show on her.

We've talked about her, but I want to do it here, and that's Isabella Stewart Gardner, because she was such an important figure in, we'll call it the Gilded Age of Boston, where But she wasn't typical of any of what we've just been talking about.

So would you talk about Gardner, who she was, and put her in context of all of this?

Absolutely.

She's my favorite Bostonian.

So she's a New Yorker by birth.

She was the daughter of David Stewart, who had an enormous fortune based on merchant empire and textiles and other things.

She marries, in 1860, the most eligible bachelor in Boston, John Lowell Gardner, Jack Gardner.

But Ash's research into how the spell went wrong leads in an unexpected direction.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and a link between the lady and Daggett's old art theft worth $500 million.

When Ash disappears through the empty frame of a stolen painting, Maeve must follow.

Inside is the Other Marsh, a hunting, deadly realm where only the latest rules apply.

It's a really cool place.

It's this house.

This rich lady, Isabella Stewart Gardner, built a house all of her art.

And everything in there is placed just where she wants it to be.