BOSTON, MA.-A perennial holiday favorite, the Holiday Table at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, will take on a new contemporary look this season. The Holiday Table traditionally celebrates the elegant turnof-the-century dinners that Isabella Stewart Gardner hosted at Fenway Court during the holiday season. This year Neapolitan artist and maverick set designer Michele Iodice will install the holiday table and will provide a new way of considering this aspect of Mrs. Gardner’s legacy. Historically the table display has showcased stunning examples of china, silver and glassware from the Victorian era and used by Isabella Stewart Gardner 100 years ago to entertain guests at her Venetian palace. The setting for eight is placed upon a late 16th century Tuscan table from the dining hall of an Italian monastery in the Dutch Room. The exact design of the contemporary table display will be conceived and finalized as Iodice visits and explores Mrs. Gardner’s collection in the coming weeks.

The contemporary Holiday Table will be on view in the Gardner Museum's Dutch Room, overlooking the museum’s interior courtyard garden – itself abloom with holiday flora including white poinsettias, winter berries and heather trees – November 22, 2005 through January 8, 2006.

“This year marks the 14th year of the Artist-residency program. We have seen three back to back contemporary exhibitions (Chairs - Stray Dogs - Variations on a Theme) and passed the benchmark of our 50th artist-in-resident. Now we have the exciting opportunity to re-consider the dinning tradition of Isabella Stewart Gardner” says Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Gardner. “Michele Iodice is just the right artist for the job. He has a quasi mystical way of transforming objects and rooms into elegant and refined works of art.”

Michele Iodice is an artist based in Naples Italy and a museum educator at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, whose work transforms objects and rooms into elaborate works of art. Iodice is a sculptor, installation artist and designer, among other talents. Previous table installations include arrangements for Breton Breytenbach and Isabella Allende for the Malaparte Literary Awards in Capri, as well as in private residencies in Europe.