Winter Park is about to get a little rebellious. On Tuesday, October 13, The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art opens “Revolt in the Parlor: Escaping Victorian Taste,” a sweeping new exhibition that celebrates the moment design broke free from the heavy, cluttered parlors of the Victorian era.
Taking its title from a book by museum founder Hugh F. McKean, the show fills three galleries with more than 250 objects tracing how artists and designers reimagined the visual world between 1890 and 1959. Visitors will journey through Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Modernism: decades when bold new materials, fresh ideas, and new ways of living turned the idea of “home” upside down.
It is a story every design lover will recognize: the shift from dark, ornate rooms to the open, light-filled spaces we cherish today. And there is no better stage for it than the Morse, home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany, including his breathtaking chapel interior created for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.
The exhibition opens to the public on October 13 at 445 North Park Avenue in Winter Park. Museum members get a first look at the Fall Member Reception on October 12, and a companion lecture with Museum Director Jennifer Perry Thalheimer is scheduled for January 27, 2027. Starting in November, the museum offers free admission on Friday evenings from 4 to 8 p.m., with live music on select nights.
Photo: Leonard J. DeFrancisci / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
