Free First Thursday - April 3, 2025

Thursday, April 3, 2025
3 - 9 pm
Throughout the Museum

Join Us!

Celebrate Isabella Stewart Gardner’s birthday month through art making in the studio, talks with Museum staff and friends, and music in the Courtyard.

On this Free First Thursday, you can:

Ask a Gardener Horticulturist how to grow nasturtiums. Find them in the Courtyard Cloisters—they'll be wearing a Nasturtium pin!

Join Natalie Dykstra, as she reads an excerpt of her book Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner in the Museum’s Living Room.

Make your own vine of paper nasturtiums in the Bertucci Education Studio.

Enjoy music from Tree Greetings in the Courtyard.

Program

Ask a Horticulturist
Cloisters, Palace
5:00 – 7:00 pm

Chasing Beauty Book Reading
Living Room, New Wing
6:00 – 7:00 pm

Make Your Own Paper Nasturtium
Bertucci Education Studio, New Wing
5:00 – 8:00 pm

Performance by Tree Greetings
Courtyard, Palace
7:00 – 7:45 pm

About the Artists

Woman with shoulder-length blond, wavy hair.

Woman with long, curly hair looking upwards, eyes closed holding a bass.

Seated woman with dark hair in a ponytails, wear glasses, playing a guitar

Photo courtesy of Ellen Dykstra

Natalie Dykstra is the author of Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life, which won a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship and was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award. For her recent book Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner she received a NEH Public Scholars grant and the inaugural Robert and Ina Caro Research Fellowship from the Biographers International Organization. Chasing Beauty has been named a finalist for the Marfield Prize, the national award for arts writing. Dykstra has been a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society since 2011 and is an emerita professor of English at Hope College. She lives near Boston.

Photo courtesy of Phil Stiles

Devon Gates is a bassist, vocalist, and composer from Atlanta, Georgia, now based in Brooklyn, NY. After studying anthropology and jazz performance at Harvard University, Berklee College of Music, and the Royal Academy of Music (London, UK) she has emerged in the contemporary jazz scene, working with esteemed artists including Terri Lyne Carrington, Vijay Iyer, Jen Shyu, and Nicole Mitchell, and performing at venues such as The Kennedy Center, SFJazz, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, and the London Jazz Festival. Recently named one of 2024’s Up and Comers of the Year (The New York City Jazz Record), she also leads her own projects as a bandleader, collaborator, and composer, bringing her unique blend of jazz, chamber, and soul influences to New York, Japan, Italy, Mongolia, India, the UK, and more in recent years

Photo courtesy Samip Ghandhi

Ria Modak is a guitarist, composer, and historian from New York. She is a PhD student at Brown University, where she studies music and nationalism in India, and is a recent graduate of the dual degree program between Harvard College and the New England Conservatory. She has worked with Vijay Iyer, Ali Sethi, Paquito D'Rivera, Isheeta Chakrvarty, and others across the United States and South Asia, at venues including Joe's Pub, Roulette Intermedium, Carnegie Hall, BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!, and more.

Free First Thursdays

Join us on the first Thursday of every month for a dynamic evening of sanctuary and community. Museum admission is free from 3 pm through 9 pm and programs kick off at 5 pm. Explore the magic of the Museum’s gardens and galleries at night, stop by Café G for dinner, snacks and drinks, and shop at Gift at the Gardner.

Advance registration is encouraged for free timed entry tickets for Museum general admission.

Registration opens two weeks before the event for the general public and four weeks in advance for members. Reserve your tickets online by clicking the button above.

Limited tickets will be available in-person at the Museum’s main entrance, starting at 3 pm, the day of the event. Please note that day-of tickets are not guaranteed.

Questions about accessibility? Please call the box office at 617 278 5156.

Free days are supported in part by the Wallace Minot Leonard Foundation, the Board of Advisors 2022 Fund for Access, and Thomas G. Stemberg Charitable Foundation.

Education and community programs receive support from the Vertex Foundation, Rowland Foundation, the Yawkey Foundation, The Beker Foundation, Liberty Mutual Foundation, The Hamilton Company Charitable Foundation, Thomas Anthony Pappas Charitable Foundation, and Janet Burke Mann Foundation.

Studio activities are generously sponsored by the Polly Thayer Starr Charitable Trust.

The Neighborhood Salon is supported in part by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs and the Polly Thayer Starr Charitable Trust.

The Museum receives operating support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.