Good news! My next book is a biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), art collector and founder of a Boston museum that opened in 1903 and bears her name. Isabella was forthright but also mysterious. From her iconic string of pearls bought at Boucheron in Paris to her great capacity for friendship, from her determination to a lingering vulnerability—she always surprises me. Every time I think I know her, I discover more.

When walking through her museum, an inside-out Venetian palazzo with three stories of gallery rooms encircling a central courtyard, the visitor moves back and forth from darkness to light, much like walking through her beloved city of Venice. It was also a pattern in her own life. Even so, the joy and pleasure she wanted visitors to have was also her own.

I feel fortunate to have a chance to tell her remarkable story for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, with publication slated (for now) for 2024. I’m grateful, too, for funding from a 2018 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Public Scholar Award and a 2018 Robert and Ina Caro Travel Fellowship, sponsored by the Biographers International Organization.

Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Natalie Dykstra

Photographs of ISG by permission of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum | Boston, Massachusetts