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Collecting Thoughts

How does a work of art wind up on a wall? Two Boston institutions are tackling that question this spring, offering inside looks at how their collections came to be. First up is Off the Wall: Gardner and Her Masterpieces, which has temporarily moved some of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s most prized pieces from the palace Gardner called home into the contemporary Hostetter Gallery. On view through Aug. 15, the 25 works—including this 1635 Francisco de Zurbarán painting, A Doctor of Law—are joined by archival photos, letters and travel albums that chronicle how the museum’s globe-trotting founder acquired them more than a century ago. Then comes Collecting for the Boston Athenæum in the 21st Century, a sampling of the 1,100-plus works the storied library’s Prints & Photographs department has acquired since 2000. Running April 6-Sept. 4, the exhibit spans everything from contemporary inkjet prints to 19th-century finds, like this 1870 lithograph from Boston’s J. Mayer & Co.