Just over a year after opening its new wing, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has received gifts totaling $8 million that will endow three of the museum’s five curatorial posts. The gifts will maintain the Gardner’s commitment in these areas — contemporary art, landscape, and music — even during a financial downturn, said museum director Anne Hawley.

“It was always my dream to get these curatorial positions endowed,” she said. “What it means is that whatever the financial ebbs and flows, there will always be curatorial leadership in these program areas.”