Admission $10 ($11 on weekends), $5 with valid college ID, $3 with ID on Wednesdays.

Within walking distance of the Museum of Fine Arts is the eclectic and wildly idiosyncratic Gardner museum, the private collection of Boston's late madcap socialite, Isabella Stuart Gardner. Thanks to lax conservation regulations and import laws, Gardner was able to amass a rather impressive, if jumbled, collection of paintings, decorative arts, and artifacts from around the world. Only here can one find opulent Byzantine windows (taken from actual Venetian palazzos), Boticelli paintings, and second century Roman bathhouse mosaics all melded into a unified whole. Gardner stipulated in her will that the collection remain exactly as it was originally curated; however, there are occasional rotating exhibitions of contemporary artwork. Currently on display: "Threads of Dissent" The museum also offers concerts on Saturdays and Sundays at 1:30. Not to be missed: Titian's deservedly famous "Rape of Europa."

617.566.1401

DECORDOVA MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE PARK

51 Sandy Pond Rd., Lincoln

Tue-Sun: 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

Admission $6, $4 with student ID.

Set in a bucolic sculpture park, where modern form becomes the temptation of a jungle gym. Sadly, while "interaction" is encouraged, climbing is forbidden. The museum itself exhibits modern and contemporary American art, mostly by New England artists. The aim and presentation of the DeCordova is didactic, which results in an irritating excess of wall-text. Recent figurative painting is the perennial favorite here.

Through Nov. 28: "Images of Europe: Photographs from the Permanent Collection," "Recoil: A Video Installation by Denise Marika," "Light on the Familiar: The Paintings of Scott Prior," "Get Real: Representational Paintings from the Permanent Collection."

Through June 4, 2000: "Robert Arneson: Bronze Self-Portraits and Drawings."

Dec. 18, 1999-March 12, 2000: "Witness and Legacy: Contemporary Art about the Holocaust."

781.259.8355