How you can visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for free this summer
This Thursday, you can head to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for live music, giant lawn games, art projects, pop-up talks, dance shows, storytelling, and scavenger hunts. Oh, and did we mention it’s free?
It’s all part of the museum’s 15th annual Neighborhood Nights series, which will also take place this year on July 27 and Aug. 10. While kids under 18 always enter the Gardner Museum for free, adult tickets typically cost $15.
“It’s really celebrating local community,” said Rhea Vedro, director of community engagement at the museum. “The objective is to break down any hesitancy that people have coming in. The museum really belongs to the community.”
Based on attendance from previous years, the museum expects 600 to 900 people per event, Vedro said.
That would suit Gardner, the museum’s namesake and an avid supporter of community services and cultural enrichment, just fine.
“In her day, the galleries were very active,” said Vedro of Gardner, who died in 1924. “She was always hosting parties and artists.”
Kids make art during a Neighborhood Nights event at the museum in 2015.
Each Neighborhood Night will have a different theme and plenty of local artists and musicians, plus a food truck stationed outside the museum. A cash bar in the garden will serve drinks. (That part isn’t free.)
This Thursday’s theme is “Sounds of Summer” and will include storyteller Valerie Stephens, bassist Jeff Jones, movement workshops with yogi Marlene Boyette, and the food truck Jamaica Mi Hungry. Guests will have a chance to paint to the sounds of some of Gardner’s favorite music and plant seeds in the museum’s garden.
“They’re wildflower seeds,” Vedro said. “The idea is, with your seed you’re planting a hope or a wish. As your seed grows, may your wish come true.”
On July 27, aka “Local Worldwide” night, the Greg Groover Jr. Quartet will perform, DJs Real P and Bad Lieutenant will spin tunes, and the Fresh Food Generation food truck will dole out rice plates and salads.
The series will culminate with a “Block Party” on Aug. 10, with performances that will include Afro-Latin youth orchestra MIC of the Hyde Square Task Force, Kadence Arts, the drumming group Grooversity, a Boston Latin School step team, and the Brooklyn Jumbies stilt dancers (whose colorful costumes, created by former Gardner artist-in-resident Laura Anderson Barbata, were inspired by textiles at the museum). Guests will be able to create textile-inspired art, led by artist Elisa Hamilton. The on-site food truck will be Tenoch Mexican.
July 13 and 27 and Aug. 10; 5 to 9 p.m.; free; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way; gardnermuseum.org
