The first major exhibition to be shown at VMFA after the grand opening of the McGlothlin Wing celebrates one of America’s greatest artists. Tiffany: Color and Light is the most important exhibition of the work of renowned designer and master of glass, Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) in a generation and VMFA will be the only American museum to show the exhibition.
Drawing on the finest collections in Europe, North America, and Russia, the exhibition presents Tiffany as an artist of international stature and significance. Curated by the world’s leading scholars, the exhibition focuses on his primary achievements – the innovative techniques and artistry he developed to achieve original and spectacular effects in glass. Among the exhibition’s more than 180 objects are examples of the leaded-glass windows and lamps for which he is best known as well as blown-glass vessels and decorative objects such as mosaics, jewelry, bronzes, paintings, watercolors, architectural elements, and silver. Eight newly restored windows from the Erskine and American United Church in Montreal – considered one of his most spectacular commissions – have never before been shown in the United States and will form a dazzling and memorable centerpiece to the presentation.
he exhibition also explores Tiffany’s long and varied career: his early life as a painter studying and traveling in Europe; the links to his father’s firm, Tiffany & Company; his work as an interior designer incorporating glass in the designs he created for some of the notable figures of his day; his relationship with the Parisian art dealer Siegfrid Bing, who distributed his work in Europe; the techniques he used to create leaded-glass windows for religious buildings and private homes; and his development of Favrile glass, a process he patented and used to make iridescent vases and other decorative arts objects.
Conceived by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and organized in collaboration with VMFA and the Musée de Luxembourg, where it debuted last September.
The exhibition’s curators are Rosalind Pepall, senior curator of decorative arts at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and Martin Eidelberg, professor emeritus of art history at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. The exhibition is organized at VMFA by Barry Shifman, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Decorative Arts from 1890 to the Present.
The exhibition is generously supported by the Faberge Society | The Founders of VMFA and sponsored by Altria Group.
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The exhibition is generously supported by the Fabergé Society and the Founders of VMFA and sponsored by Altria Group
The Banner Exhibition Program at VMFA is made possible by the Julia Louise Reynolds Fund.
An exhibition developed and produced by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition tour was organized in collaboration with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond and sVo – Musée du Luxembourg, Paris.
