The Met’s Fall Exhibition Traces Louis C. Tiffany’s Gilded Age Design Studios
A forthcoming exhibition will trace the work of Louis C. Tiffany’s studios through nearly 120 drawings and selected objects, including a planned reunion of a stained-glass window and its original transoms.
By Maya Chen · October 5, 2026 · 3 min read
NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Museum of Art will open “Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany” on Oct. 22, bringing nearly 120 works and selected loans together to examine how the designer’s studios produced American decorative art. Announced July 28, the exhibition is scheduled to run through Feb. 7, 2027, in galleries 691 through 693 at the Fifth Avenue museum. Drawings for stained-glass windows, lamps, mosaics, enamels, textiles and interiors will offer visitors a view of design decisions before they became finished objects.
The Met says the exhibition will bring together nearly 120 works from its collection and selected loans in galleries 691 through 693 at the Fifth Avenue museum. The material spans the early 1890s into the 1920s, with drawings for stained-glass windows, lamps, mosaics, enamels, textiles and interiors. Rather than presenting only finished objects, the exhibition is organized around drawings that reveal how ideas moved from sketches and watercolor presentation sheets toward furnishings and architectural commissions.
One notable pairing is expected to reunite a monumental stained-glass window, “Woman in a Pergola with Wisteria,” with original wisteria transoms designed for it. The Met says the transoms were recently discovered in an Arizona private home and that the elements have not been shown together for at least half a century. That account comes from the museum’s announcement; the display is still forthcoming, so its effect on visitors cannot yet be assessed.
The exhibition also promises to make collaboration part of the story. The Met identifies designers including Frederick Wilson, Jacob Holzer, Agnes Northrop, Clara Driscoll and Julia Munson, whose contributions could be obscured when a studio’s production is attributed chiefly to its famous director. Curator Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen is organizing the presentation with research associate Barbara Veith, and the museum plans an accompanying illustrated catalogue. For visitors interested in design history, the show offers a chance to study drawings as evidence of process, authorship and the movement of decorative ideas into American homes and public interiors.