The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany on October 22, a Tiffany exhibition of nearly 120 design drawings plus select loans. On view through February 7, 2027, in Galleries 691–693, the show traces how Louis Comfort Tiffany’s studios turned sketches into windows, lamps and interiors.
Key Takeaways
- The Met bills Designing the Gilded Age as the first major exhibition dedicated to the design drawings behind Tiffany’s Gilded Age work.
- The drawings span the early 1890s through the 1920s and include commissions in Canada, Mexico, Cuba and Switzerland.
- A loan from the Chrysler Museum of Art reunites the 1911 window Woman in a Pergola with Wisteria with its original transoms, which were recently found in a private home in Arizona.
- The exhibition credits designers who went largely unrecognized, including Clara Driscoll, Agnes Northrop, Julia Munson, Frederick Wilson and Jacob Holzer.
- Many of the drawings document works that have since been lost, altered or never built.
- Curator Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen organized the show with Barbara Veith of The American Wing.
Nearly 120 Drawings Show How Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Studios Worked
Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) is remembered for finished objects: glowing windows, leaded lamps, glass mosaics. The Met’s Tiffany exhibition turns the focus to the paper that came first. Designing the Gilded Age draws on what curator Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen describes as the largest collection of Tiffany design drawings anywhere, ranging from quick working sketches to watercolor presentation drawings made to win over clients.
The show is organized by theme across three galleries. One covers domestic interiors, one covers ecclesiastical settings, and one covers public and commercial commissions, with Tiffany’s work in lighting threaded through all three. Lamps, windows and decorative objects on loan sit next to their corresponding drawings, so visitors can follow a design from first idea to finished piece.
Louis Comfort Tiffany Stained Glass Reunites With Its Lost Transoms
The centerpiece of Designing the Gilded Age is a reunion. The Chrysler Museum of Art is lending its stained-glass window Woman in a Pergola with Wisteria, completed in 1911. The window’s original wisteria transoms were separated from it and recently turned up in a private home in Arizona. At The Met, the window and transoms will be shown together for the first time in at least half a century, alongside the drawings that planned them.
For a studio whose output was scattered across homes, churches and public buildings, that kind of reassembly is rare. It also shows the main argument of the exhibition: a Tiffany window was a coordinated design project, not a single object made by one person.
Clara Driscoll And The Studio’s Uncredited Designers Take Center Stage
Designing the Gilded Age puts names to a workforce that history has often left out. The Met is highlighting émigré and women designers whose drawings shaped the studio’s look: British-trained Frederick Wilson, Swiss-born Jacob Holzer, and Agnes Northrop, Clara Driscoll and Julia Munson.
That focus changes how Tiffany’s name reads on an object. The exhibition presents the studios as a collaborative operation in which many designers and artisans produced work sold under a single signature. For New York readers, it is a portrait of a creative business that drew on the city’s immigrant and female labor to supply a national market.
Gilded Age New York Money Built The Market For Tiffany Studios
The Met places Tiffany’s work within the economic setting that made it possible. The Gilded Age, a period of rapid economic growth in late 19th- and early 20th-century America, also produced New York’s major cultural institutions, including The Met itself, founded in 1870. Rising industrial wealth fed an expanding market for luxury goods, and the commissions in the exhibition reflect it: interiors for private homes, theaters, houses of worship and public buildings.
The drawings also show how far that market reached. Studio commissions went beyond the United States to Canada, Mexico, Cuba and Switzerland, an international client list built from a New York workshop.
Designing The Gilded Age Preserves Commissions That No Longer Exist
Many of the drawings in the Tiffany exhibition record works that have since been lost, altered or never realized. For historians, those sheets are the only remaining evidence of how certain rooms and windows were meant to look. The show also examines the conservation of these fragile works on paper, with interpretive materials and digital components explaining what decades of study and preservation have uncovered.
Fall programming along Fifth Avenue has leaned toward historic objects this season, from The Met’s drawings to the New York Public Library’s centennial display of the original Winnie-the-Pooh toys.
A fully illustrated catalogue by Frelinghuysen and other authors accompanies the exhibition. The exhibition is made possible by Tiffany & Co.
FAQs
When Does The Tiffany Exhibition At The Met Open?
Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany opens October 22, 2026, and runs through February 7, 2027, at The Met Fifth Avenue in Galleries 691–693.
What Was Louis Comfort Tiffany Famous For?
Louis Comfort Tiffany was known for stained-glass windows, lamps, mosaics and interiors produced by his studios during America’s Gilded Age. His studios also made enamels and textiles for homes, churches, theaters and public buildings.
Who Was Clara Driscoll?
Clara Driscoll was one of several women designers at Louis C. Tiffany’s studios whose contributions were historically uncredited. The Met’s exhibition highlights her alongside Agnes Northrop, Julia Munson, Frederick Wilson and Jacob Holzer.
When Was The Gilded Age In New York?
The Gilded Age covered the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period of rapid economic growth. In New York, it produced major cultural institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, founded in 1870.
Where Did Tiffany Studios Work Outside The United States?
Drawings in the exhibition document commissions in Canada, Mexico, Cuba and Switzerland, in addition to projects across the United States.
