Tiffany Chapel Makes Florida's Morse Museum a Destination for Easter Weekend
- WINTER PARK, Florida
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- March 20, 2015
The Morse Museum’s three-day Easter Weekend Open House begins on Good Friday, April 3, with free admission throughout the day as well as live music and a curator tour in the evening.
The museum will be open on Good Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., with music by classical guitarist Joshua Englert beginning at 5 p.m. and a 7 p.m. tour by Curator Donna Climenhage of the exhibition Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Laurelton Hall. Admission is also free Saturday, April 4, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Easter Sunday, April 5, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
In the galleries, visitors can walk among Louis Comfort Tiffany’s leaded-glass windows ablaze with the flowers of spring: tall white lilies, sunny yellow daffodils and showy pink tulips. The Chapel, designed by Tiffany for the 1893 world’s fair in Chicago, is always a highlight of a visit to the Morse during the Easter Weekend Open House.
The free weekend is also a chance to see the museum’s newest installations. These include The Bride Elect—Gifts from the 1905 Wedding of Elizabeth Morse Genius, a display of the luxury items given to Charles Hosmer Morse’s daughter when she married in Chicago. In Selections from the Harry C. Sigman Gift of European and American Decorative Art, the Morse offers an informal preview of a recent donation that has further strengthened the museum’s collection of late 19th- and early 20th-century objects.
Jeannette Genius McKean (1909–89), who was Charles Hosmer Morse’s granddaughter and Elizabeth Morse Genius’ daughter, founded the museum in 1942. She and her husband, Hugh F. McKean (1908–95), the museum’s director until his death, built the Morse collection over a period of 50 years. The Easter Weekend Open House continues a tradition they established more than 30 years ago.
The museum is owned and operated by the Charles Hosmer Morse Foundation and receives additional support from the Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation. It receives no public funds