A NEW LIGHT ON TIFFANY About the Exhibition »A New Light – A New World« Catalog Audio Tour

October 15, 2009 until January 17, 2010
A New Light on Tiffany. Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls

The exhibition “A New Light on Tiffany. Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls” is the first comprehensive presentation of objects from Louis Comfort Tiffany’s workshops in a Munich museum.

On exhibition will be more than sixty breathtaking objects from the Tiffany Studios, not in the form of an overview however, but as an exhibition especially dedicated to the outstanding role of Clara Driscoll. As the head of the glass cutting workshop staffed entirely by women, Driscoll played the leading role amongst numerous female artists who made crucial contributions to the design and manufacturing of masterworks in the Tiffany Studios. The exhibition throws a totally new light on Tiffany’s design process as well as on the social background of women pursuing a profession in New York around 1900.

Even today Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) is still regarded as the most important and creative designer in the applied arts in the USA from the period around 1900. His fame stems above all from his lamps and stained glass windows. His elegant and decorative designs achieved the perfect combination of art and functionality and made him one of the leading figures of the American Art Nouveau movement.

The objects exhibited, including lamps, windows, mosaics, enamel and ceramic objects, originate for the most part from the collection of the New-York Historical Society (N-YHS). In addition there are also loans from other museums and private collections. The New-York Historical Society possesses one of the world’s largest collections of historical objects, American art and documentary materials concerning the history of the USA and New York. N-YHS is not only one of the most important research libraries in the USA, but is also the home of one of the oldest museums in New York City.

For a long time it was assumed that the world-famous lamps and windows as well as all the other objects from the Tiffany Studios were definitely designed by only one man, the company’s founder and Artistic Director, Louis Comfort Tiffany. The exhibition “A New Light on Tiffany. Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls” is a result of recently completed research into the correspondence of Clara Driscoll (1861-1944).

The current research of Martin Eidelberg, Nina Gray and Margaret K. Hofer, the exhibition’s curators, has revealed that concealed behind Louis Comfort Tiffany were a group of female designers to whom in retrospect many successful Tiffany objects can be attributed. These Tiffany Girls worked in the Women’s Glass Cutting Department under the direction of Clara Driscoll, responsible for such popular designs such as “Wisteria”, “Dragonfly”, “Peony” and “Poppy”.

Running concurrently with the exhibition, Museum Villa Stuck and the Bayerisch-Amerikanisches Zentrum im Amerika Haus München e.V. (Bavarian American Center at America House Munich Association) will be presenting “A New Light – A New World”, a series of events alternating between Museum Villa Stuck and America House. The series is being generously supported by the U.S. Consulate General Munich.

Impressum Museum Villa Stuck, Prinzregentenstr. 60, D-81675 München, Tel. +49(0)89-45 55 51-0, villastuck@muenchen.de
Tuesday to Sunday, 11-18 Uhr

A municipal museum of Munich