The galleries are filled with paintings, sculpture, tapestries, furniture, and decorative arts from cultures spanning thirty centuries.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum displays an art collection of world importance, including works that rank among the most significant of their type. Isabella Stewart Gardner collected and carefully displayed a collection comprised of more than 2,500 objects - paintings, sculpture, furniture, textiles, drawings, silver, ceramics, illuminated manuscripts, rare books, photographs and letters - from ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, Renaissance Italy, Asia, the Islamic world and 19th-century France and America. It is particularly rich in Italian Renaissance paintings, as well as in 19th-century works by John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler. The first Matisse to enter an American collection is housed at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Built to evoke a 15th-century Venetian palace, the Museum itself provides an atmospheric setting for Isabella Stewart Gardner's inventive creation.

The museum was established in Boston in 1903 by Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), a wealthy patron of the arts. Isabella Stewart Gardner, known also as "Mrs. Jack" in reference to her husband, John L. ("Jack") Gardner, was one of the foremost female patrons of the arts. She was a patron and friend of leading artists and writers of her time, including John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler and Henry James. She was a supporter of community social services and cultural enrichment. She was an ardent fan of the Boston Symphony, the Boston Red Sox and Harvard College football. Isabella Stewart Gardner was also the visionary creator of what remains one of the most remarkable and intimate collections of art in the world today and a dynamic supporter of artists of her time, encouraging music, literature, dance and creative thinking across artistic disciplines.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is housed in a building designed to evoke a Venetian Renaissance palazzo, but it was built entirely from the ground up in Boston, out of new materials, but incorporating numerous architectural fragments from European Gothic and Renaissance structures. The antique elements are seamlessly worked into the design of the turn-of-the-century building. Special tiles were custom designed for the floors, modern concrete was used for some of the structural elements, and antique capitals sit atop modern columns. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum interior garden courtyard is covered by a glass roof, with steel support structure original to the building.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is Open:
Tuesday-Sunday 11 am-5 pm
(Front Admission Desk closes at 4:20 pm and galleries begin closing at 4:45 pm)
Open the following holidays: New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day. Closed Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

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