Exhibit Highlights Tiffany’s Lasting Impact on American Church Design

THE WASHINGTON POST
By Chris Herlinger

Detail from stained glass window, Corning, NY

NEW YORK---Louis C. Tiffany is perhaps best known for his intricate glass lamps, but a new exhibit at the Museum of Biblical Art reveals a spiritual side to the master designer and craftsman whose studio single-handedly shaped the image of American churches. “Louis C. Tiffany and the Art of Devotion,” which runs through Jan. 20, 2013, centers on the religious memorials and decorations that Tiffany and his firm created for American congregations for about a half century, beginning in the 1880s. Tiffany lived in a time of a quickly growing, and increasingly urban, United States. Church expansion — some 4,000 new churches were built between the 1880s and 1910 — was an integral part of the era, which played out under the still-haunting shadows of the U.S. Civil War. “People were turning to the power of cultural memory, and where did they find it? In churches and synagogues,” said curator Patricia Pongracz, the museum’s acting director. [link]