A staple of Boston’s fine arts culture is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Opened in 1903 after the passing of her husband, John Lowell Gardner, the Gardner Museum was opened as a way for Gardner to share the expansive art collection her husband acquired through trips abroad. Gardner sought to personally connect to her community through the sharing of fine arts and to foster art education in Boston proper. Since 1903, the museum has featured pieces such as Titian’s “The Rape of Europa,” a piece considered one of the most important Renaissance paintings in art history, as well as Rembrandt’s “Self-Portrait, Aged 23,” another highly regarded piece in the art world. From 1903, when Isabella Stewart Gardner opened the doors to her art museum, to the present day, the people of Boston have delighted in the privilege to witness real art and real stories in modern times.

The Gardner museum has not existed without its struggles, however. In 1990, tragedy struck, and the museum was robbed. On Mar. 18, 1990, the museum fell victim to an art heist; perpetrators took 13 pieces totalling $500 million. This was widely seen as the largest art heist in history and is still under active investigation, as the pieces have never been recovered. The thieves cut the paintings down, leaving nothing but their empty frames hanging from the walls. This incredulous act didn’t stop the Gardner Museum, which receives approximately 200,000 visitors annually. As of Feb. 19, 2026, the Gardner Museum has started hosting the world-renowned exhibit “Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self.” 

“Persona” has been well-regarded, as artists explore what it means to have a true voice in the face of a superficial world that promotes the idea of an online persona, but the exhibit tends to forget the real works and lives of real people. On the evening of Feb. 19, 2026, the Gardner Museum hosted an artist talk where three of its featured artists were invited to share their stories and personas with the Boston public. The event featured artists Hakeem Adewumi, Jamie Diamond and Narcissister. All three artists have created pieces highlighted in the photography section of the exhibition, each with their own artist persona. The incohesiveness of the exhibit is striking as one walks the walls of “Persona.” Artists from all different walks of life, all with their own stories, have created this commonplace for their art to be displayed. All three of the featured artist’s styles differ; however, their shared need for an art “persona” is the driving factor of their creations. 

The first artist to speak was Narcissister, a Brooklyn-based performance artist, whose character “Narcissister” directly reflects her artist persona. Narcissister blends the art of photography with her repurposing of wig display forms in order to elicit art with commentary on feminism, race and an overall exploration of gender itself. 

Narcissister aims to challenge the norms and binary constraints by showcasing sexually provocative photos of her character, “Narcissister,” taking place in different forms of everyday life. This hyper-realistic lifestyle that Narcissister has put herself into, in a sense, comes across as inauthentic and, frankly, vulgar. While her message of identity and the over sexualization of women in general is delivered, her method of delivery feels out of touch. Performance art in general is supposed to ask its viewers to put themselves into the performance in a way, and provoke the audience to feel deeply intertwined with the artist. However, in Narcissister’s case, her performance feels almost too performative and dumbed down for her audience. The viewer cannot intertwine themself in the art, because the performance feels out of touch with the reality that “Narcissister” is trying to achieve. This idea of a “persona,” in her case, feels genuinely phony and almost clickbait-like.  

There is a sense of nostalgia in the entirety of the “Persona” exhibit. Although told through different media, a feeling of familiar ties within each of the artists’ creations lingers. The next artist, Hakeem Adewumi’s pieces, however, capture what it means to feel this sort of struggle between modern creations, and the idea that a person’s persona is built on the foundation they stem from. Hakeem Adewumi is a Nigerian Texas-born artist who specializes in photography, focusing on the African-American experience across the world. His pieces have a sense of home and family, with undertones of continuous struggles internally and externally. He has this kind of vivid way of depicting African-American life in Texas that feels wholeheartedly genuine to him as a person. 

Hakeem Adewumi’s persona feels less performed, as he takes the realities of his life and the lives of those around him, and poses photos capturing the true essence of the person in the photograph. Persona is, at the end of the day, supposed to be as original as possible and takes from the life that the creator has lived, with minimal input from the world around. Hakeem Adewumi has a true persona, in that his voice is real and reflects the life he has lived, and not just the experiences of a collective group. The pitfall many creators tend to fall into in an exhibit as raw as this one is this kind of divide between telling your own stories and reflecting the stories you see around you. Adewumi’s pieces, because of this, have a personal feel; he is reflecting the life he has lived, and not putting on an act in the name of art. 

A true persona is authentic to the self but can be related to the experiences of others. The last artist to speak, Jamie Diamond, has a beautiful way of blending her own life into the lives of people around her, not only gaining persona, but sharing it with the world. Diamond is an American artist who specializes in multidisciplinary art, focusing on the human condition and the different roles that one plays in their life. Her latest project, “I promise to be a Good Mother,” which was featured in “Persona,” follows Diamond’s character “Mother” as she is posed living through the trials of motherhood. Her photographs dissect the complexities of motherhood, while also bringing humor and levity to a sometimes trying responsibility. This collection of photographs feels serendipitous when reflecting on the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, a woman who lost her own child when he was very young. 

The persona of “mother” is one that Diamond herself is fully immersed in, in her everyday life, as the mother of two young children and living through the events she photographs. Her connection to the character is raw because it is a true reflection of her; her “Persona” is one she wholeheartedly lives every day. The highlighted piece in Diamond’s collection is one depicting her holding a reborn baby doll in the streets of New York, with her own daughter’s hands wrapped around her waist. This piece is captivating, as it sees this mother character as a character, but is directly contrasted with Diamond’s own child. The gravity of the photo is felt, and her persona is one of a real and raw nature, because she isn’t playing a role, but assuming the one placed upon her. There is also a feeling of solidarity, as this image is the opener for the Gardner Museum, again reflecting the pain in the past of its creator. As Diamond explores the condition of motherhood, she also inherently becomes the idea of persona, although she isn’t assuming an identity, but comforting in the one she was given. 

Finding one’s true self in a world filled with fallacies is a hard task. Connecting to this idea you have about yourself, and finding what it means to be inherently you, is almost impossible when normal discourse is superficial in nature. The true beauty of “Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self” is this continuous search for what it means to be you, and not this idea of playing a version of yourself. This exhibit, at the end of the day, is about finding authenticity within oneself and being able to fill roles within your life that stay true to the image you want others to see you for. The true meaning behind a persona isn’t the physical concept, but more the person who chooses to wear the persona, and if we have to put on a persona to exist, are we really truly existing?