Tiffany on Long Island

If you're a fan of Tiffany lamps, windows, and other dishes, you may be interested in the other side of Louis Comfort Tiffany -- his paintings. Over 130 of his watercolor and oil paintings were assembled for  the Nassau Museum of Art's exhibit, Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist of the Gilded Age. 

I love the simplicity of the Natilus Shell Table Lamp  

Between you and me, both my husband and I were not blown away by his paintings. Some of them do exhibit decent technical skill, but there is no striking vision or style that makes them stand out the way the artists more famous for that medium are. It may be due to the fact that he seemed to vacillate between different influences of the period, including Impressionism, the Hudson River School, and the popularity of what was called "Oriental" paintings that depicted exotic locations from the Middle East at a time when that was particularly fashionable.

Tiffany lamps

Tiffany mirror

However, it is interesting to see that he took note of some of the architectural elements he observed on his travels to incorporate into his Oyster Bay Mansion, Laurelton Hall. Unfortunately, the mansion burned down. However, this exhibit include a couple of Tiffany's paintings of his home, and the Metropolitan Museum retains its columns and entrance screen. 

The Met also has some of truly spectacular specimens of his stained glass windows, including the 3-part Garden landscape window made  for Linden Hallis that comprises over 10,000 pieces of glass.  If you make it before the end of February 2027, you can also see nearly 120 drawings for the plans for his stained glass designs in Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany

The earrings have a cover that can encase the diamond drops to make them less
temptingfor thieves when the wearer travels. The choker can convert into a bracelet. 

Of course, the Nassau Museum also has some Tiffany lamps on display. If you want to see even more of them all in one place, I'd recommend a visit to the New York Historical, which owns 100 of them. The Nassau Museum's exhibit is set up differently, though, with the lamps distributed among other glass objects from Tiffany studio and furniture of the period. 

Be sure to also catch the display of jewelry (not by Louis Comfort of his family's famous store) in the hallways part of the museum that and the three elaborate ensembles on mannequins that are meant to convey how intricate decoration and design carried over even to the fashions of that time.

These beautiful glass dishes are from Tiffany's studios. If you look closely, you'll see that flowers get stretched a bit around the rims. That's because the color was placed into the glass and got stretched as it was shaped rather than painted onto an already formed dish. Imperfect, perhaps, but still perfectly beautiful. 

The Tiffany exhibit closes on November 8, 2026. That happens to be a Museums on Us weekend, so you would be able to visit for free if you have a Bank of America card. If you don't, you can either pay the $15 regular admission or check if you library offers passes to it. Many do. 

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New York City as a Wonderland for Children

If you're in or near New York City this summer, I'd recommend you travel to the upper part of Museum Mile --1220 5th Avenue. That's the address of the Museum of the City of New York. On its third floor is the exhibit "Another Wonderland: Abram Champanier's Alice Mural" that closes on September 27th.

                                     Photo of the artist painting the mural shown above on the X feed of NYC Health System 

The artist was a Jewish immigrant from what was part of Russia in 1896 but then became part of Poland. He changed his last name from Sherschewitz or Szerszewicz to a consistent sound but not consistent spelling. Before he adopted the French-spelling Champanier surname in the 1930s, he used Shampanier, a name that appears on his earlier paintings.

Champanier carried out several commissions for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), though he is probably most celebrated for this whimsical set of 16 murals between 1938 and 1940. The murals graced the hospital ward for 40 years.

However, in 1978, the hospital had lost accreditation, and in 1981 it was slated for a complete gut renovation. The murals would have been destroyed as a result if not for the fact that they had come to the attention of Andrew S. Dolkart of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

He recollected that even in the empty ward, the panels stood out as “witty and fun and bright," and certainly worth saving. In the course of four days in August 1981 a group of volunteers went in and salvaged 15 of the murals that then had to be painstakingly restored over many years. Now you can see the vibrant colors in living color in-person at this exhibit.

My favorite is probably the library scene. Your favorite may be one of the ones that celebrates the subway, the Stature of Liberty, or whatever part of 1930s New York city you consider most iconic.

Another iconic part of NYC that you shouldn't miss is right across the street from the museum. It's the most beautiful part of Central Park: The Conservatory Garden.  The Untermyer Fountain is one of the fountains built around sculptures in this garden. This memorial to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Untermyer --who also built the lovely gardens in Yonkers -- is a bronze cast of Walter Schott's Three Dancing Maidens.

You can see several more photos I've taken of this delightful garden here. 

Related:

Restoring a garden and some history in Yonkers