Artist-in-Residence
Artist-in-Residence
"I’ve come to find, I’m not just investigating a place through drawing, but also the mind of an extraordinary woman, the museum’s founder." –James Prosek
In May of 2018 James began an artist-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum at the invitation of director Peggy Fogelman and curator of Contemporary Art, Pieranna Cavalchini. Over a five-year period (2018 – 2022) he made many trips to the Gardner to observe, learn, research, and draw in the collections with the help and guidance of the museum staff.
Prosek approached his residency at the Museum in the same way he approaches his travels to the Kyrgyzstan mountains or to the streams of Northern New Zealand—as an investigation through drawing. Instead of a bird, or an eel, or moth, Prosek focused on a painting, a flowering jade plant, or rocks that Isabella Gardner collected and kept in her desk in the Macknight Room. Early one Saturday morning, Prosek sat and painted the Museum’s iconic hanging Nasturtium display and instantly captured its sense of wonder and surprise. Prosek notes, “Nasturtium time is particularly magical, where the blooms are literally spilling from the courtyard windows like cascades. It fortifies this idea of the whole place—the living material as well as the art—as a kind of Eden of Gardner’s making.” Since his initial residency in May 2018, Prosek returned repeatedly to draw and to paint in the Courtyard, Greenhouses, Conservation Labs, and in the Artist-in-Residence apartment.
During his time at the Museum Prosek spent days in the archives exploring Isabella Stewart Gardner’s photo albums of her 152 Beacon Street residence and Fenway Court, about 1922 (ARC.100031) as well as her travel albums and correspondence. Gardner pressed leaves and flowers into several of her scrapbooks as she traveled, including the Travel Album of St. Augustine Florida and Cuba (1867-1886) which contains pressed seaweed. Prosek discovered examples of flora and fauna collected at locations symbolic to Isabella such as ivy from the grave of Richard Wilhelm Wagner, 1888; an olive leaf from Plato's Academy, gifted by Isabella’s nephew, William Amory Gardner, in 1886; and Ivy from poet Goethe’s Gartenhaus and a leaf from the rock where he and Von Stein sat, 1892 August 24 [from Earlier Author’s Case, Long Gallery] (ARC.006361). He also read Emerson's manuscript of an oration, The Method of Nature and a Letter with Bird Feathers sent to Isabella Stewart Gardner by Arthur Jermy Mounteny Jephson, from the Castle Mallow, County Cork, Ireland, 20 September 1891 (ARC.002245)
During his residency Prosek was drawn to Gardner’s collection of art and objects, but also her love of plants, and the relationships she nurtured with friends like Okakura Kakuzo and John Singer Sargent. Over the course of many visits, he created a series of fifty-four exquisite drawings capturing everything from rarely seen personal mementos and carefully arranged gallery objects to the ever-changing flora and fauna of the Museum’s iconic Courtyard. He also traveled to the Gardner family island in Maine to draw the beautiful landscape where Isabella spent summers with her husband John “Jack” Gardner. These drawings have been assembled in a book, published by the museum in the summer of 2025.
Each drawing in the book is paired with carefully selected quotations from letters, poems, and journals by Gardner, her friends, and contemporaries. These selections highlight the breadth of Isabella’s eclectic interests and reveal Prosek’s own keen, observant eye. Thoughtfully paired with an essay by the artist, they invite readers to reflect on the enduring dialogue between art, nature, and personal history.
Featuring artwork and texts by James Prosek, along with contributions from Peggy Fogelman (Norman Jean Calderwood Director), and Pieranna Cavalchini (Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art).
Designed by Siena Scarff Design
Edited by Margaret Burchenal
Published by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2025
Foreward
Peggy Fogelman
Norma Jean Calderwood Director
I first met James Prosek when I was the interim Director at the Morgan Library and Museum, having been introduced by Drawings curator John Marciari. It was immediately apparent that I’d encountered an artist of great talent and even greater curiosity. From childhood, James has been an observer and explorer of the natural world—a direction that expanded with experience and travel to impart a global perspective— ultimately becoming an award-winning artist, writer, and naturalist. Prosek’s art reflects the world around him and expresses profound concern for the disappearance of natural habitats, one result of ecosystem mismanagement by humans. Going beyond how we name, systematize, and order nature, he is drawn to that which does not fit neatly into our categories, positing new combinations or envisioning the wondrous exceptions to evolution. Hybridity in all its forms first attracted him to the Gardner Museum and gradually evolved into a fascination with Isabella’s Courtyard garden as a metaphor for Paradise.
The genesis of Gardner’s Eden dates to Prosek’s first artist’s residency at the Museum in 2018. He approached our Museum as he does the streams of New England or the habitats of distant lands: through drawing. Instead of sketching birds, eels, or moths, Prosek focused on paintings, plants, and even the rocks that Isabella Stewart Gardner collected and preserved in her desk in the Macknight Room. Between visits to the Courtyard, the galleries, and Museum archives, he returned here again and again, eventually creating the 54 beautiful drawings published in this book. From views of iconic Museum spaces to little known flora preserved in our Archive—such as ivy from the grave of Richard Wagner or a leaf from the rock where Goethe and Von Stein sat—his choices encompass the breadth and depth of Isabella’s tastes and reveal Prosek’s thoughtful eye. His fascination with the Museum’s collection extends from its objects to the letters, diaries, and travel albums that provide glimpses of Gardner’s personality, the things that moved her, and the events that gave shape to her life. This book pairs his drawings with her words and those of her friends and contemporaries, offering the artist’s very personal view of this Museum and its founder.
I am especially grateful to James Prosek for his marvelous work and Pieranna Cavalchini, the Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art, for bringing this splendid book to completion. For their generous support, I would like to acknowledge Tom and Lisa Blumenthal and the Barbara Lee Program Fund.
