Tiffany’s Laurelton Hall

After reading Clara and Mr. Tiffany, it was only a matter of time before I made a visit to Winter Park’s Morse Museum.

The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art is home to one of the largest collections of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s works – including leaded glass windows and lamps, art jewelry, pottery, and the chapel interior he designed for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (which was actually installed in an outbuilding at Laurelton Hall in 1916).

I’ve been to the Morse Museum once before, but not been since it opened the new Tiffany Wing on February 19th. The 6,000-square-foot space focuses on recreating rooms of Tiffany’s Long Island estate – Laurelton Hall. I felt as if I was seeing the museum through new eyes since so many of the pieces discussed at great length in the novel are on display.

Jeannette McKean (the museum’s founder) and her husband Hugh McKean (museum’s director until his death), rescued objects from Laurelton Hall after a devastating fire in 1957. Thanks to their collecting, the 10 galleries of the new Tiffany Wing include a restored Daffodil Terrace and 250 art and architectural objects from or related to the estate.

Overall, the new wing is a fascinating addition to an already superb museum. Its particularly interesting to get up close to the leaded glass windows to see the distinctively colored glass that was created by Tiffany’s workers and meticulously placed with such a keen sense of light and color. I highly recommend a visit if you have any interest in art or have read Clara and Mr. Tiffany.

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Orlando area residents: Lucky you! The Morse Museum is offering free admission every Friday night (4pm to 8pm) through the end of April. Can’t make it on a Friday night? The museum is also free all Easter weekend.