Gardner Museum Expansion | Fenway

[found5dollar]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

They are still looking......

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1383174&srvc=rss
Ex-con: Investigators scoured home in Gardner museum probe
Search & destroyed
By John Zaremba
Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Investigators on the long, cold trail of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum thieves searched for the elusive stolen art in the home of a grizzled former safecracker from Worcester last month but walked away with only a handful of postcards, an envelope, an old photo and pieces of the ex-con’s unfinished crime-caper novel, the Herald has learned.

Anthony “Chucky” Carlo, 62, said some 30 investigators — including officers in riot gear — punched holes in the walls of his duplex, rifled through closets, cut open couches and tore up attic insulation in a 10-hour raid to find any trace of the treasures stolen by night 21 years ago.

“I opened the door and there they were in battle gear. Vests, big guns, everything. Like they were expecting me to bust out a carbine. Needless to say, I was kind of shocked,” Carlo told the Herald of the Oct. 25 search. “They had some heavies there. I told them, ‘Hey guys, this is going to be an embarrassment to you.’

“They pretty much looked everywhere and they left. The warrants said they were looking for the paintings or anything pertaining to the Gardner museum,” he said. “They thought they were coming up with something. They weren’t doing it just to roust me.”

Officials from the FBI and the museum declined to comment.

Carlo, whose last brush with the law was a minor drug rap a decade ago, said authorities seized an envelope, postcards he received some 30 years ago and the outline of a lurid page-turner he never finished writing.

“You know, just crime, sex, drugs, rock and roll,” he said. “Then I realized I didn’t have the talent.”

They also took a photograph of the old Summer Street jail in Worcester as workers prepped it for demolition.

“They said, ‘What do you have that for?’ I says, ‘I don’t know. I must have been planning to break in there,’ ” Carlo said. “It was an amusing photo.”

What it wasn’t was one of the 13 pieces of near-priceless art stolen in the early-morning hours of March 18, 1990, when men dressed as cops infiltrated the museum and made off with works, including Rembrandt’s only known seascape, a rare Vermeer, a series of drawings by Edgar Degas, a finial from a Napoleonic flag, and a Chinese beaker. Suspects have died and disappeared; clues have led to dead ends.

Carlo said he knows of the heist only what he saw in media reports. He said he helped police recover paintings stolen from the Worcester Art Museum in 1972.

“That’s when I learned about art. Nothing but aggravation,” he said.

Carlo says the search and subpoena are evidence of a lesson he’s learned the hard way over the years: Once a con, always a suspect.

“I’m an old man and they still won’t get off my case,” he said. “They don’t ever let you live it down.”

 

[kz1000ps]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

I got a new camera!

Now this is awkward:

 

[BostonUrbEx]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Flippin' sweet.

What did you get?

 

[kz1000ps]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Canon Rebel T3i. So far so good, although I only have the stock 18-55mm lens right now. Can't wait to get a proper telephoto lens!

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Baby vomit green?

 

[Arborway]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Grass is supposed to start growing from the walls... right?

 

[Lurker]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Whomever selected the horrendous red brick needs to be thrown out of an aircraft without a parachute.

 

[datadyne007]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Some VERY VERY sexy tectonics going on in this pic:

 

[BostonUrbEx]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

I'm not sure what to even think...

I guess that makes it art.

 

[datadyne007]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

I really dislike this building though. It's just that one cropped moment that Phil captured that I like. The building as a whole is really a mess. I have no clue what Piano was thinking.

 

[Beton Brut]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Whomever selected the horrendous red brick needs to be thrown out of an aircraft without a parachute.

Agree -- it's a bad choice. I can only assume the folks at RPBW were trying to "match" the shade of the barrel-tiles on the roof of the palace, or perhaps some of the surrounding buildings.

Grass is supposed to start growing from the walls... right?

Vines, as I recall.

FWIW: A musician friend of mine recently played in the new hall and said really good things about the space and acoustics.

I'm not sure what to even think...

I guess that makes it art.

This is a cool building, built in the very worst possible location and context.

I dunno what to think either...

 

[kz1000ps]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Agree with everything said in the last few posts. It conflict with everything--its neighbors and itself.

And having stood in the park across the street, staring at it multiple times now, I'm particularly bothered by what little it does to contain that space. There's no streetwall to speak of, and instead you see the ass ends of those apartment blocks and the equally ugly Longwood skyline. Not that I was expecting a boutique museum to erect a 7-story sheer-rise building, but the structures almost seem afraid to take any kind of stand.

 

[itchy]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Fail. Could we have the carriage house back, please?

It would be nice to see architects, planners and developers adopt a version of the Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm.

This is less gratuitous than the destruction by St. Cecilia's of something that fit in well with its surroundings in favor of something that absolutely does not, but I am not clear on why the carriage house needed to be razed and a vomit-inducing "signature building" put up in order to add a new entry way. Couldn't something more subtle -- and less damaging to the overall sense of place the museum has/had -- have been pursued here?

 

[sidewalks]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

What a shame...it's a shame that the BRA showed such deference to Piano. IF any building ever called out for a light touch, this was it. Instead we have a schizophrenic pile of copper with slapdash pieces of glass and steel.

 

[whighlander]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

What a shame...it's a shame that the BRA showed such deference to Piano. IF any building ever called out for a light touch, this was it. Instead we have a schizophrenic pile of copper with slapdash pieces of glass and steel.

Piano - -should have provided a "Glass Pyramid" entry (a la Lovre) and then burried the rest of the new functions under the existing Carridge House

At least Foster and Company didn't try to compete with the external iconic elegance of Guy Lowell's MFA

Even the much benighted (including by Westy in other threads) Philip Johnson let the McKim's BPL dominate (except for the ugly bunkeresque entrance and blast walls in front of the windows)

 

[BostonUrbEx]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

This is a cool building, built in the very worst possible location and context.

I dunno what to think either...

I'm trying to imagine it next to the ICA, and I think that works. Either that or in the UAE or one of China's ghost cities.

 

[Tombstoner]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

I'm trying to imagine it next to the ICA, and I think that works. Either that or in the UAE or one of China's ghost cities.

Too piddling for the UAE or China.

 

[JohnAKeith]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Does the Gardner Museum have a staff member to talk to the press about the "heist"? And by staff member, I mean, PR person? You read about the thing every other g.damn week in one paper or another.

It's almost as if they wanted it to happen ...

 

[stellarfun]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

This looks like Piano foisted onto the Gardner trustees a design that had been rejected for another museum elsewhere. Value engineering by recycling.

Perhaps there will be some redeeming aspects once the interiors are open, but I won't hold my breath.

 

[joebos]

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Is the green surface a protective membrane that they'll peel off when it's finished?