The Morse Museum’s trove of archival materials is a significant part of its comprehensive and internationally recognized collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany. When examined in context with the beauty of Tiffany windows, pottery, and paintings, these archival materials tell stories beyond the objects—stories found in the progression from idea to production. In her lecture, Thalheimer will provide a new way to look at archival materials. They are, she says, essential elements in unlocking information that bolster exhibitions and displays at the Museum. The exhibition she curated, Stories from the Archives—Louis Comfort Tiffany and His Studios, opened at the Morse on October 15, 2019.
For more than twenty years, Thalheimer has been interpreting the Museum’s collection while researching the life and art of Louis Comfort Tiffany. She lectures and writes on Tiffany and, more broadly, American decorative art. Thalheimer, who grew up on Long Island near the site of Tiffany’s estate, Laurelton Hall, earned a master’s degree from New York’s Parsons School of Design/Cooper-Hewitt Graduate Program in the History of Decorative Arts. She curated the Morse Museum’s 2011 6,000 square foot exhibition expansion of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Laurelton Hall. Leading up to the Morse’s extension, Thalheimer supervised the Morse’s loan to Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall—An Artist’s Country Estate (2006–2007), an exhibition organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with the Morse and contributed to the catalogue. She has more recently contributed articles on Tiffany to exhibition catalogues for the Corning Museum of Glass’ Tiffany’s Glass Mosaics (2017), Lafayette College’s Tiffany at Lafayette (2016); and the Museum of Biblical Art’s Louis C. Tiffany and The Art of Devotion (2012). Thalheimer’s ongoing project for the Morse Museum, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Chronology, is an online resource for the documented facts of Tiffany’s life.