Elaine Reichek: Ever Yours, Henry James

For her forthcoming installation on the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade, American born artist Elaine Reichek mined the intimate letters between novelist Henry James and Mrs. Gardner for inspiration. Her installation, Ever Yours, Henry James, a graphic sampler composed of phrases from the letters, will be on view beginning June 27.

Reichek, a 2001 Artist-in-Residence at the Museum, is the tenth artist to create an artwork for the façade. She was drawn to the many ways James closed his letters to Gardner—from the more formal “with many good wishes, Very truly Yours” to the very affectionate “always constantly.” By focusing on these closings, Reichek hopes to convey the depth and genuine feeling in the long friendship between Gardner and James. The façade will also coincide with the Museum’s fall exhibition, Henry James and American Painting, opening October 19 and featuring several of the letters, correspondence, and artwork that resulted from the famous friendship.

“By making use of the older 19th century private epistolary mode for a public contemporary art piece, I wanted to cross the literal passage between the old and the new, connect contemporary art with the older collection, and by doing this perhaps mirror Mrs. Gardner’s own non-hierarchical, non-linear methods for the display of her collection,” Reichek said.

Reichek is a conceptual artist who uses multiple media to examine beliefs and preconceptions about aesthetics and culture. She investigates images, texts, and objects, seeking stories she can re-tell in her work. Reichek has exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art and The Jewish Museum; the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Columbus, Ohio; the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Belgium; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ireland; and the Tel Aviv Art Museum, Israel. She received her BFA from Yale University and her BA from Brooklyn College. She lives and works in New York.

The Artist-in-Residence Program is directed by Pieranna Cavalchini, the Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art, and is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Barbara Lee Program Fund. Funding is also provided for site specific installations of new work on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Facade on Evans Way. The museum receives operating support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which receives support from the State of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Media sponsor: Boston Magazine.