"When I met Peggy Burchenal, Curator of Education at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, I felt like I was on a job interview.  But there was no job to be had, and although I knew I had a perspective that could be helpful to the Gardner Museum, I didn’t know how it might integrate with what the Gardner was already doing.  I didn’t even know what they were already doing.  In fact, I had only visited the Gardner Museum once, just a few hours on a summer afternoon over a year before.  I was sitting in Peggy’s office only because Peggy is friends with Jim Sheldon, my professor/advisor for a directed study called ‘Curatorship and Museum Education.’

Jim sent me to talk with Peggy because I had rambled on about wanting to explore how widespread visual media technologies change the way a culture thinks about art.  I had a feeling that understanding this relationship would provide me with the knowledge that I could use to improve aesthetic experiences.  Therefore, I was interested in optimizing the visitor’s museum experience…

‘Introduction to the Gardner’ is a series of three web exercises intended to introduce Isabella Stewart Gardner and the unique way she installed her collection in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum through encouraging meaningful art-viewing practices.  After using this internet site, a visitor will know the benefit of looking closely at art objects, while also gaining an appreciation of Isabella’s unique installations and the determined and eccentric nature of Isabella herself.

This project is not specifically an extension of ‘Pathways Through the Gardner,’ a site design mapping conceptual connections throughout a collection database, nor is it a replacement for ‘Pathways.’  Where ‘Pathways’ deals with navigating through a web of pathways that links artworks conceptually, ‘Introduction to the Gardner’ is a focused introduction to the unique nature of the Gardner Museum.  Its concentration on the Gardner Museum itself will likely prove to be a more useful website for the average Gardner Museum visitor."