The director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will be speaking at the Masterwork's Museum of Bermuda Art this evening.

Anne Hawley was appointed director of the museum in 1989 and her appointment brought a passionate arts leader to one of the most original museums in the world.

Her topic will be the "Museum of Autobiography: Isabella Stewart Gardner Collects and Creates".

Ms Hawley will also speak about how the Gardner Museum tells, on many levels, the story of Isabella Stewart Gardner's life. She will share her understanding of the autobiographical story Isabella Gardner tells through the medium of her museum by showing objects she collected and interpreting her installations in the museum's court, its Spanish Cloister and the Titian Room.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has been described as an intimate Venetian-inspired palace in the heart of Boston, and is home to more than 5,000 art objects, spanning 30 centuries, including masterworks by Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, Rembrandt, Degas, and Sargent, as well as sculptures, tapestries, furniture, manuscripts, letters, and decorative objects.

It was opened to the public in 1903 and the Museum's collection, together with its historic and contemporary special exhibitions, artist-in-residence programmes, concerts, and public events, continues to celebrate personal connections with art.

Under Ms Hawley's leadership, Isabella Gardner's legacy of patronage and innovation continues to thrive in programmes that explore new ideas and thinking across all the arts.

The Museum is also home to one of the most remarkable art collections in the world, collected and personally installed by Isabella Stewart Gardner herself, the collection features more than 5,000 artworks, and was the first museum of its kind combining a world-class collection of art with an intimate atmosphere, and it is the only museum in which the building, collection, and installation are entirely the creation of one woman.

Doors open at 5.30 p.m. and the lecture begins at 6 p.m. Tickets are $20 for members and $25 for non-members. There is a free glass of wine with entry.