Bring Back the Pig

    I love museums. Especially museums with lots of funky stuff in them. The old Roseau County Museum used to have a big jar of formaldehyde containing a two-headed pig just inside the front door. A bit beyond that was a pair of shredded overalls that had been struck by lightening. The young woman who had been wearing them at the time went on to lead a productive life, according to the explanatory index card.

   After the Roseau flood of 2002, a new museum was built and the overalls and pig(s) went into museum limbo. Many years ago I visited the North Dakota State Museum in Bismarck, North Dakota. It was filled with dusty down-home items. After the tear-down and rebuild, the arrowheads and scythes were replaced with anodyne educational displays about big agriculture, the aboriginal past, and the energy sector future. 

   One museum immune from such changes is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. When Mrs. Gardner gave the museum to the public, she stipulated that her collection must remain as she had arranged it. There's a rumor that if the current board changes anything, Harvard University gets the museum. During a visit to the museum one time, my sister pointed out a pair of well dressed gentlemen. "Those are the guys from Harvard keeping an eye out," she said.

   Isabella was born in New York in 1840 and grew up in Manhattan, the daughter of a wealthy linen merchant. When she was 16 the family moved to Paris. Isabella visited the great Renaissance art in Italy and she vowed if she ever had money she would build a house and fill it with art for people to visit, which is exactly what she did thanks to an inheritance from her father.

   Not too far from Fenway Park in Boston she built a Florentine style palace. She became a patron of the arts and bought lots of paintings. There are no two-headed pigs in the collection but there's lots of bric-a-brac in addition to the Botticellis and the Titians. It's all arranged in an old fashioned and wonderful way. One of the strangest sights are the eleven empty picture frames, for it was on this day in 1990 that the world's largest art heist took place at the museum.

   Early in the morning two thieves dressed as Boston police officers gained entry to the museum and subdued the two guards. In 81 minutes they collected eleven works of art including two Rembrandts and a Vermeer. They also took the cassettes in the security cameras. Total value of the stolen paintings is half a billion dollars. A ten million dollar reward has been offered for information leading to their return. Will they ever return? Like Charley of the MTA, their fate is still unlearned (what a pity).

If your name is Isabella, you get in free. That's funky.