Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 'Secret Cabinet'

Isabella Stewart Gardner assembled a small locked room-often referred to in scholarship as her 'secret cabinet'-where she displayed works considered intimate or risqué by late-19th-century standards. The cabinet was part of her original 1901 Venetian-style house-museum and items from that collection have been described in museum catalogs and archival scholarship. Access to specific closed-off display areas and sensitive objects is limited and handled by curatorial staff and special exhibitions.