What it had to solve
Louis Comfort Tiffany's lamps and windows are world-famous; the design process behind them, and the people who drew them, had never headlined a show.
The idea
An exhibition where the working drawings, not the famous objects, tell the story of Tiffany's large, collaborative, often uncredited studio.
How it works
From 22 October 2026 to 7 February 2027 at The Met Fifth Avenue: nearly 120 works, mostly from the museum's own collection plus selected loans, ranging from quick working sketches to finished watercolor presentation drawings.
What it did
The first major exhibition devoted specifically to Tiffany design drawings; it documents lost, altered and unrealized commissions and restores credit to the studio's uncredited women and émigré artisans.
Background
On 22 October 2026 The Met Fifth Avenue opens 'Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany' (through 7 February 2027) — the first major exhibition devoted specifically to the design drawings behind Tiffany's stained glass, lamps, mosaics and interiors. Nearly 120 works, mostly from the Met's own collection with selected loans, range from quick working sketches to highly finished watercolor presentation drawings.
The curatorial move is to treat the drawings not as secondary material but as the story: they show how a composition was established, how figures and ornament were placed, how color and light were tested, how an ambitious interior was pitched to a client. Some record works that survive today; others are the only evidence of objects altered, damaged, destroyed or never realized.
The exhibition also reframes Tiffany himself: less a lone genius whose name is attached to luminous objects than the leader of a large collaborative design enterprise of artists, designers, artisans, émigrés and women whose contributions were often left uncredited.
Why it lands
The drawings had been treated as preparatory material despite being the only record of many lost works
No major exhibition had devoted itself to the design process behind the famous objects
The show restores credit to the studio's uncredited women and émigré artisans
Sketches and presentation watercolors let visitors watch commissions develop in stages
What you can take
Point the camera at the process, not the product — the same archive can yield a story nobody has told.
Since then
The show runs to 7 February 2027; by making the paper archive the protagonist, The Met adds a design-process chapter to how the Gilded Age's most famous decorator is studied.
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