Growing up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., I went to museums almost every weekend, first with my parents and then with friends. I know that sounds a little geeky for teenagers, but even before we could drive, we loved to get on the Metro and explore the National Gallery of Art, theHirshhorn and sculpture garden, and The Phillips Gallery. Most of the museums were free, and full of endless paintings and historical objects and mysterious winding corridors. At night we’d go to the 9:30 Club, but that’s a story about music.
One of my favorites was the National Portrait Gallery, where there were presidents and first ladies, Girl Scouts of the USA founder Juliette Gordon Low (who I would later write a book about that includes this portrait), Frida Kahlo, Pocahontas, and so many others. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I would stare at their expressions and try to read them as we’ve been putting together this week’s show, “Reframing the Portrait.”
When I was 17 and a freshman in college, I first met Isabella Stewart Gardner at her museum in Boston – well, I feel like I’ve met her in studying her 1888 portrait by John Singer Sargent, displayed in the Gothic Room in her house, which is now the museum. I was in school when the Gardner art heist (considered the biggest unsolved art theft in history) happened – a Vermeer and Rembrandt were taken, but not Ms. Gardner herself. I’ve been going back to Boston lately visiting my own daughter in college and I try every time to spend at least a little time at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, visiting Isabella and her courtyard garden and looking at the empty frames where the other paintings used to be. I’ll always wonder what she’s seen and what she’s thinking.
I hope you enjoy hearing from novelist Maggie O’Farrell this week on “The Marriage Portrait,” Peter Brathwaite on “Rediscovering Black Portraiture,” and Steve Nadler on “The Portraitist: Frans Hals and His World.” Is there a portrait – a painting or photo – that has meaning to you? Tell us about it at listen@ttbook.org.
–Shannon