Ruling on Donor’s Will Aids Boston Museum’s Expansion Plan
March 16, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
A court decision has cleared the way for an expansion of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that officials hope will help the Boston institution shed its old-fashioned image and heal wounds left over from the 1990 theft of several masterpieces, The New York Times reports.
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruling this month allows the Gardner to depart from the strict parameters of its patron’s will, which effectively barred any changes in the museum’s collections. The museum is planning a 65,000-square-foot addition that it says is crucial to the 106-year-old museum’s survival, given the wear and tear on its original buildings, which hosts as many as 200,000 visitors a year.
Also: the Los Angeles Times praises the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s purchase of a major work by the 20th-century Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco, with money raised by selling other pieces in its collection, calling the move a positive example of the controversial practice of “deaccessioning.”
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