Tag: Museums

The Lioness of Boston, with Emily Franklin (episode 283)

Isabella Stewart Gardner was a consummate collector, generous philanthropist, and rabid Red Sox fan.  Today, she’s best known as the namesake of an art museum in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood (and if we’re being honest, the museum is probably best known for a famous 1990 heist).  This week, Jake interviews author Emily Franklin, whose new novel The Lioness of Boston explores the person behind the Gardner fortune.  They discuss the great romance, tragedy, and scandal of Isabella’s life, the different personas she tried on throughout different eras of her life, and her obsession with the idea of a legacy.  Emily will tell us why Boston at first turned up its nose at wealthy young Isabella, but later came to embrace the flamboyant and eccentric Mrs Jack as one of our most colorful and generous characters. Emily will also describe what makes historical fiction different from biography, and the freedom and limitations that the genre brings.  


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The Museum Heist (episode 126)

It’s probably a familiar tale… Late at night, after the museum is closed, a man talks the guard into unlocking the door.  Once inside, he pulls out a gun, and within seconds, the guard is tied up and blindfolded, while a gang roams through the museum, picking out rare masterpieces.  By the time the guard gets himself free and calls the police, the gang has made off with millions of dollars in stolen artworks, in a case considered the largest art heist in US history.  Yes, the tale may sound familiar, but we’re not talking about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum case, we’re talking about a different art heist, one that was carried out 17 years earlier and across the river in Cambridge.  This is the story of the Fogg Museum coin heist.


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Episode 10: The Grisly Fairbanks Murder

In August of 1801, a young man named Jason Fairbanks showed up on his sweetheart’s doorstep.  He was covered in blood, and telling the story of a suicide pact gone wrong.  This tale of a rich kid gone astray could be ripped from today’s tabloid headlines.  Fairbanks and his presumed sweetheart Eliza Fales were the center of a sensational trial, a daring escape from jail, and a manhunt that stretched to the Canadian border.  Does this story of star crossed lovers have a happy http://healthsavy.com/product/cialis/ ending?  Listen to this week’s show to find out!

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