Crystal Bridges wrangles Texas Tiffany window
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The Tiffany "Mountain Landscape (Root Memorial Window)." Photo: Courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art said Wednesday it has added a 108-year-old Tiffany stained glass window to its permanent collection, a first for the museum.
The big picture: Son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of the luxury jewelry brand, Louis Comfort Tiffany was an established designer who began experimenting with stained glass in the 1880s. He used science and a stable of artisans to help create his visions.
- Works from his active era are widely considered uniquely American masterpieces.
State of play: The roughly 8-by-9-foot piece, titled "Mountain Landscape (Root Memorial Window)," was acquired from Sunset Ridge Church and Collective in San Antonio, where it had been installed for 94 years.
- The window was commissioned in 1916 by the Woodmen of the World, an early fraternal life insurance organization, to commemorate founder Joseph Cullen Root.
- It was installed in the company's headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1917. The work was moved in 1931 to what was then a Woodmen of the World Memorial Hospital chapel in San Antonio.
- Artist Agnes Northrop, one of the so-called Tiffany Girls, is credited with the design of the window.
What they're saying: "It was just no question that this window would have such a home at Crystal Bridges," Wingate curator of craft Jen Padgett told Axios
- "There were so many things. … Even the landscape setting of the window itself reminds me a little bit of 'Kindred Spirits' on that beautiful gorge with the waterfall, but then also it feels very much like a kind of Ozarks setting. … This one just felt so right for our collection, right for our museum and audiences," she said.
Context: A "wisteria table lamp" by Clara Driscoll was the first Tiffany glass work in the Crystal Bridges collection, Padgett said.
- Sunset Ridge will also give Crystal Bridges another Tiffany work, titled "Arkansas State Window," created in 1931 when "Mountain Landscape" was relocated from Omaha.
Padgett did not disclose the price the museum paid for the work but noted that Sunset Ridge was seeking to sell the window as part of its own conservation process.
- It was important to the church that the window be accessible to the public and that it not go into a private collection, where it wouldn't be displayed, she said.
Stunning stat: A different 16-foot-tall Tiffany window owned by a private collector sold for $12.48 million to an anonymous bidder in November.
What's next: The window will go through a conservation process and is set to be on permanent display sometime in 2026, when the museum's expansion project is complete.