Isabella Stewart Gardner's museum, then known as Fenway Court, privately opened in Boston with a grand celebration. Gardner had spent years forming a major collection and, after her husband Jack Gardner's death, built a Venetian-palazzo-inspired setting in the Fenway area to house it. The January 1 opening marked the presentation of that collection as an immersive environment rather than a conventional chronological museum display. Accounts emphasize the performance by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gardner's distinctive hospitality, details that underline the museum's hybrid identity as private palace, public cultural institution, and artist-centered salon. Its galleries preserved Gardner's dense, personal installation method, later protected by the terms of her will.
The museum became an influential model of the collector-founded historic house museum.