Longtime Head of Boston’s Gardner Museum Stepping Down

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum director Anne Hawley announced Wednesday that she will depart at the end of the year after a quarter-century leading the venerable Boston institution, The Boston Globe reports. Ms. Hawley said she had been weighing an exit for two years as the Gardner neared the finish line of a $180-million capital campaign devoted largely to raising money for the museum’s 2012 expansion.

“I told the board I’d stay until we finished the capital campaign, and it is done. … I just feel like it’s time to let a new person lead,” said Ms. Hawley, 71, whose tenure at the Gardner began shortly before the notorious and still unsolved 1990 theft of more than a dozen masterpieces. Galvanized by the heist, she led efforts to overhaul the institution, re-installing several galleries, expanding programming, and overseeing the controversial, Renzo Piano-designed addition.