Gardner's gambit

It's nonsense, of course. Nothing in this world stands still. The natural attrition of wear and tear, the unattributable whims of fashion, and the abrupt effects of conscious decision-making all play their part, even at an institution like the Gardner.

And yet there are things we may collectively decide we wish to preserve as much as possible, not only to honor the past, but also to allow us to savor a certain hard-to-define emotion: the poignancy, one could say, of trying - and inevitably failing - to hold back the march of time.

Gardner's beloved city of Venice is perhaps the greatest example of an attempt at preservation that gives rise to this disorienting but exquisite emotion. We know Venice is sinking, we know it has been transformed into something of a theme park, that it is being wrecked by tourism. But what can you do? Venice is Venice. People have been relishing its atmosphere of faded glory since the 16th century. There is something special - and deeply human - about trying to preserve the glory even as we treasure the sensation of fading.

All this is worth contemplating as the Gardner stands on the cusp of a major building project, due to begin this summer, that will see Gardner's museum supplemented by a new wing made of glass and steel, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. Larger than the original building, the new wing will contain a performance hall, restaurant, exhibition space, gift shop, and administrative offices. The hope is that it will relieve the original building from the burden of supporting ancillary functions, such as the gift shop and offices for a staff greatly expanded since Gardner's day, that it was never intended to support.

It is a major gambit.

But is it the first such attempt at radical change to Gardner's "inviolate" museum? By no means. In fact, the space that is now the rather cramped gift shop and almost aggressively intimate cafe was once the "Chinese Room" - a temple-like space filled with Asian objects, including statues of Buddhas, Japanese and Chinese screens, lacquer tables, tea utensils, and Chinese embroideries.

The Chinese Room was rarely open to the public, although intimates of Gardner who were allowed to see it found it deeply affecting. "Very wonderful," wrote Maud Howe Elliott, a friend, in her diary. "Very awful in its dark thrill. It seemed to me as if she had planned to be buried there. The new rooms seemed the best yet to me."

Strangely, even after Gardner died, the Chinese Room did not rate a mention in the museum's guidebooks or catalogs. Some of the items, such as the textiles, were stashed away over the following decades and, despite a period in the '50s when it was occasionally opened to the public, it continued to be regarded as an anomaly.

Finally, in 1971, shortly after Rollin Hadley became director of the museum, almost the entire contents of the Chinese Room were sold at an auction in New York. "The space was floored over and turned into a cafe and shop."

That last sentence is the final one in Alan Chong's introduction to "Journeys East: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Asia," a revelatory book that accompanies - and rather surpasses - an exhibition about Gardner's long and complex relationship with Asia in the museum's small temporary exhibition space.

The tone of regret behind Chong's matter-of-fact conclusion is hard to miss. Indeed, when I asked Chong, curator at the museum, whether the decision to sell off the contents of the Chinese Room now seems like a mistake, his response was, "Oh, undoubtedly."

Some might want to use his admission to argue that any radical decisions relating to changes at the Gardner will later be regretted. Others, including Chong, who supports the proposed new wing, would counter that moving ancillary functions like the shop and restaurant away from the original building is exactly the way to prevent such bungles in the future.

Either way, the timing of "Journeys East" seems poignant. And not just because work on the new building is about to begin. It's also poignant because both exhibition and catalog are the result of a tremendous effort of research undertaken not just by Chong but by his co-curators Noriko Murai and Richard Lingner, complemented by a team of art historians who have contributed essays to the catalog.

Lingner, who is 51 and knows as much about the history of the Gardner as anyone alive, was recently told that, because of budget concerns indirectly related to the wider economic crisis, he was being laid off. He had been at the museum nine years. He had to clear out of the building that day.

Did the decision to lay off Lingner, along with some highly trained conservators and ancillary staff, relate to financial pressures brought on by the new building project? Director Anne Hawley denied it when I interviewed her by phone recently. But then, museums almost always issue such denials when contentious new projects coincide with decisions that undermine the core functions of the museum, which are to protect and study its collection.

The financial situation at the Gardner, which relies on an endowment that has recently plummeted in value to cover 40 percent of its operating budget, is indeed complicated, and we will probably never know whether it was truly necessary to lay off these staff. But we do have the exhibition and the catalog as testimony to the wonderful work that they do. Or did.

"The liberalizing, tranquilizing effect upon Mrs. Gardner of her experiences in the East cannot be estimated," wrote Morris Carter, the Gardner's first director. But Mrs. Gardner's connection with Asia was not just tranquilizing: It was energizing, transforming.

Chong's fascinating introduction in the catalog traces the entire course of Gardner's interaction with Asia. It reminds us that she was, when all is said and done, a beauty junkie. But if beauty was what mattered most to her, it also made her admirably attentive. On her travels in Asia, she became fascinated with Eastern religion, developed disdain for the crudities of colonialism, and was absorbed by the everyday lives of ordinary people.

She constructed six extraordinary albums devoted to her 1883-84 adventure in Asia with her husband, Jack. All the photographs she collected on the trip, along with her daily diary entries and letters she sent to acquaintances, are magnificently reproduced in the catalog.

But even though she and Jack bought a great many curios and trinkets such as jewelry and snuff boxes, many of which are in the museum today, all this was before she started her life as a serious collector. The trip did, however, inspire her to create a kind of Japanese Garden at her Brookline home. And Chong describes the ways in which Gardner's experience in Asia affected the famous portrait of her by John Singer Sargent.

Almost a decade after beginning to collect European art in earnest, and in the three years prior to opening her museum, Gardner suddenly embarked upon a frenzy of buying Asian art. She bought 150 items from two Boston dealers and received various items from friends and acquaintances who knew of her plans to include an Asian installation in her museum.

At the same time, and for many years thereafter, she was deepening her interest in Asian culture. She had many friends with Asian expertise who influenced her in this direction, but the most important figure was Okakura Kakuzo, a former head of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, who had come to Boston to advise the Museum of Fine Arts, where he later became curator of Asian art.

As they got to know each other, Okakura played an increasingly prominent role in Gardner's social life. He dressed in Japanese clothing, conducted Japanese tea ceremonies by candlelight, organized Japanese festivals at the museum, gave her poems he had written, and generally taught her about Asian art. He gave her his Japanese tea set (which can be seen in the current exhibition) and swept her up in his circle of Japanese artists and colleagues.

Her affection for Okakura developed in the wake of her husband Jack's death. So it was a fresh blow to her when Okakura himself died in 1913 while visiting Japan. Bernard Berenson was one of many who realized the profound effect he had had on her. According to Berenson's wife, Mary, Berenson told Gardner that "although he had found her fascinating and wonderful before, he had never loved her until this time, for she had never been lovable. She [Gardner] wept at this, and said it was true" and credited Okakura for the change.

Gardner resumed collecting Asian art, shifting her focus from Japanese art, which was very fashionable, to Chinese art, which was less so. The year after Okakura's death, she opened the Chinese Room in the back corner of her Fenway Court museum.

Now it is a cafe and shop, but soon, if the building project proceeds as planned, the space it occupied will once again be available - although Hawley says that the museum has not yet decided what to do with the space. Unfortunately, it is too late to reassemble the collection that was sold off in 1971.

Sebastian Smee can be reached at ssmee@globe.com