The Boston Globe looks at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s own plans for a Renzo Piano extension and finds that there is a renewed effort to save Fenway Court’s carriage house:
The purpose of the construction project is to relieve pressure on the existing building, which houses a shop, a cafe, performance space, and offices. The plan calls for demolition of the carriage house, erected by Gardner in 1907. The museum building opened in 1903.
It became a focal point of debate last week, when several staff members and experts associated with the museum suggested it may have been more central to Isabella Stewart Gardner’s vision than the museum’s leadership had realized or acknowledged.They cited a recent essay by Robert Colby, a former curatorial fellow at the museum with a PhD in Renaissance art history from London’s Courtauld Art Institute.
Gardner Museum Expansion Approved (Boston Globe)