If self-indulgent, haphazard, rambling prose intrigues you: read on

HIYA folks.

                  I’ve written a bit about what I’ve been up to this summer, and more specifically how I make my indoor internship a little greener. If self-indulgent, haphazard, rambling prose intrigues you: read on.

                  My name is Michela Moscufo and I am a rising junior, English and Art History double major. I am working at my favorite museum in Boston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, helping out in the Education Department and living with my family in Brookline, a neighborhood over. The job itself is super awesome but decidedly not the outdoor gig a lot of the other AESOP leaders are enjoying. As much as I would love to be frolicking in the sunshine (in any capacity), I am collecting and analyzing data about the Museum’s programs, helping little kids make collages, and preparing for tours I am giving in Spanish. But what makes the long unpaid hours worth the while is the fact that I get to wander the darkened halls of this museum before it opens to the public. For half an hour every morning I tip toe from room to room, afraid to break the silent spell of Art and gaze in wonder at the shadowed frames of Whistler and Sargent.

[This museum comprises the private collection of one Isabella Gardner, who decided to build a Venetian palazzo for herself in the beginning of the 20^th century and fill it to the brim with art. Besides being one of the first people understand the value of art patronage in this country, she used to walk lions on a leash around Boston and wore her Red Sox baseball cap to see shows at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She stated in her will that if one single thing be moved or changed from the way she had organized her museum, the entire collection should be sold at an auction in Paris and all the proceeds be donated to Harvard University. So dope.]

                  As I walk around her house, I get a sense for what it was like to live here. What it was like to walk downstairs in the early morning hours and see these gilded frames lit by sunlight and not artificial light. What it is like to see art without a security guard shifting nervously behind you, making sure you don’t get too close. What it is like to see the most incredible works ever made, alone in a room. When I return to my favorite room (the Blue Room) during the day, an older Russian security guard is always there. He has a PhD in Psychology and tells me secrets about the paintings, things he has noticed from standing in that room for 4 hours a day for 20 years. His favorite painting is a watercolour John Singer Sargent painted of Venice: “when I look at it, it makes every day feel like a spring day.”

                  As magical as it is to be inside this museum, I need more green. We are connected as AESOP leaders and AESOPers by our love for outdoor spaces, and the experiences that they facilitate.

                  I am lucky that even sitting at my desk, I am surrounded my green. The glass walls that enclose the Education Department office run parallel to the glass enclosure of one of the museum’s many greenhouses. What this means is that across the hallway from my desk are beautiful and exotic plants, whose growth and maturation I have monitored joyfully these past two months. As I day dream at my desk, avoiding the surveys I have to write and mountain of art theory books I have to catalogue, my eyes wander to the mountains of green with the blue, white, yellow blossoms, the stunning pink “Bleeding Hearts,” the dark somber holly. Sometimes I go inside for a second to feel the hydrangeas up close, or inspect the delicate ferns, then quickly slip back to my desk where the humidity level is more manageable.

                  When I need even more green I go to the museum’s courtyard, which is a Venetian façade that Isabella inverted because she thought that the balconies and columns were too beautiful to be exposed to the harsh city air. The soft, faded pink of the walls sparkles in the sunlight that streams in from the glass roof. The soft hum of wondered speech passes through the galleries, and drifts across the courtyard garden.

                  Another way I make my internship greener is to bike everywhere. I bike to work along the Riverway of the Emerald Necklace, a string of parks that Fredrick Law Olmstead made to frame the Muddy River than runs from Brookline into the Fens of Boston. The dog days of summer makes the trees glisten and sparkle, and I swear everyone in Brookline is humming. As I bike to work I listen to Dr. Dog, whose soft raspy voice wraps around concepts of emancipation and nostalgia like no one else’s can. As I bike home I get lost in the windy residential roads and breathe in the sunset. Green turns to black and I am starting to learn what a full days’ work means, what it means to be surrounded by beauty, and what it means to work for an organization that you believe in.

I hope you all are seeking out the green in unexpected places. See you in August.

Michela.

A view of the courtyard (although no cameras are allowed in the museum)