The Metropolitan Museum of Art is about to open its most dazzling behind-the-scenes show yet. From October 22, 2026, through February 7, 2027, The Met Fifth Avenue will present Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany — the first major exhibition devoted to the design drawings behind Tiffany Studios’ celebrated creations.
The show brings together nearly 120 works from the Museum’s own collection, plus select key loans, tracing the journey from paper sketch to finished masterpiece: stained-glass windows, lamps, mosaics, enamels, textiles, and interiors for homes, churches, theaters, and public buildings. One magical highlight reunites the Chrysler Museum of Art’s monumental stained-glass window Woman in a Pergola with Wisteria (1911) with its original wisteria transoms, recently discovered in a private home in Arizona — the first time they have been shown together in at least half a century.
Curator Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen shaped the exhibition around the collaborative spirit of Tiffany’s studios, giving overdue credit to uncredited designers — including women and émigré artists like Agnes Northrop, Clara Driscoll, and Frederick Wilson — and revealing decades of conservation work that restored these fragile drawings to full beauty.
Open during The Met’s regular hours and included with Museum admission, this is a rare chance to see how Gilded Age New York’s most luminous works of art began — as luminous ideas on paper.
Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
