Morse Museum To Open

New Wing in 2011

The Morse Museum in Winter Park, FL, broke ground on a new $5 million wing designed to exhibit objects and architectural elements from Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Long Island country estate, Laurelton Hall.

Opening in early 2011, the 12,000-square-foot wing will double the size of the existing museum and enlarge the courtyard garden.

Daffodil Terrace

A highlight will be the restored Daffodil Terrace, the estate’s 18-by-32-foot outdoor room. It’s supported by eight marble columns topped with bouquets of glass daffodils. This terrace will be installed in a glass gallery visible from inside and outside the museum.

In addition to the terrace, more than 300 objects — including leaded-glass windows, lamps, art glass, furnishings, and more — will be installed in six other new galleries.

One third of these objects were part of a New York exhibition, Louis Comfort Tiffany—An Artist’s Country estate (Nov. 21, 2006–May 20, 2007), organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with the Morse.

Permanent exhibits in the Morse Museum’s new galleries also will include surviving components of Laurelton Hall’s dining room, living room, reception hall — also known as the Fountain Court — and other rooms and buildings.

Highlights from the dining room installation are a 13-foot-high marble mantelpiece, 25-foot-long Oriental rug; a domed leaded-glass chandelier that’s six feet in diameter; and a suite of six leaded-glass Wisteria transoms.

The living room installation will showcase five Turtleback-glass hanging lamps as well as four leaded-glass panels depicting the four seasons; the latter were part of a single large window that garnered Tiffany a gold medal at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

From the art gallery Tiffany built on the estate, the Morse will showcase the pair of intricately carved Indian doors and half-moon-shaped peacock-feather window-and-glass mosaic that graced the gallery’s entryway.

The Laurelton Hall galleries will occupy the ground floor of the museum’s new 12,000-square-foot wing. The second level will feature an expanded library, conference room, and administrative offices. 

Set on nearly 600 acres overlooking Cold Spring Harbor and Long Island Sound, the 1902-era Laurelton Hall is often considered Tiffany's greatest work of art. It integrated the artist's prime passions in life – nature, color, light and the art of Eastern and Islamic cultures.