They don't mention the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on that list, but an EBT card will get you a $2 admission there. And because it's the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and she was kinda batty, admission is free if it's your birthday or your name is Isabella, and you get $2 off your ticket if you wear Red Sox paraphernalia.
user15026
@BESW I don't know who she is but it delights me that it has rules like that
She was the wife of a very wealthy businessman in Boston in the early 1900s. She spent a lot of her life flying around the world and collecting whatever art and architecture caught her fancy, then throwing massive parties and inviting the public to see her collections.
When she died she made sure the collections would be preserved as a museum exactly as she wanted it, which included the above stipulations about admission, forbidding any changes to the arrangement of the collections, and requiring regular musical performances in the gallery.
It's kinda wild. Her friends' watercolors are next to world-famous paintings, a part of her favourite dress hangs underneath the first Titian to be displayed in America (because she thought they went well together), there's a whole room of fireplace mantles. Hardly anything is labelled. Even the staircase banisters were chosen by her and imported from around the world.
There's also a few portraits of her by very famous painters, and a Rembrandt hangs unlabelled in a shadowy corner in the gallery where you can listen to live music on the weekends.
"Delightful" is a good word for it, but it drives conservationists bonkers and is admittedly based on the common but troublesome practice of rich people walking off with other places' stuff.
But, you know, that's not exactly unique to Gardner.
One thing I really do like about Isabella is that she had little patience for concepts of "classics" or artistic canon. If she liked it, that was enough.
If she didn't like it, it didn't matter what anybody else thought.
user15026
@BESW Oh, yeah, I am sure it is fraught with issues
user15026
but I like the idea that it exists just because she liked things
Aye. It's one of those things where you can like it without apologising for its problems.
It's so awesome that she not only collected exactly what pleased her, but that she dedicated a large sum of her time and money and legacy to making sure the people of Boston got access to it.
user15026
@BESW yeah, that's part of why it tickles my fancy, because she was like "okay i like stuff and I want to make sure that other people can also appreciate the stuff"
In an Inspector Calls by J.B Priestly does Eric Birling actually rape Eva Smith? Does "force" indicate rape, and did he "force" himself into the apartment or onto her?
If he did rape her - why does she stay with him?
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I have a self-answered question I've been slowly working on. I'm pretty proud of it because it manages to challenge about five misconceptions about literature at once.
But of course, for some reason it's unreasonably hard to find good sources about this topic.