Junk in the Eye of the Beholder

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was no fan of unfashionable Louis Tiffany in the ‘50s, when Hugh and Jeannette McKean salvaged much of his Victorian glasswork from his ruined mansion, Laurelton Hall.

In 1955, when the McKeans put on their first show of Tiffany art, the Met staff told the McKeans they could have almost any Tiffany they wanted from the museum’s collections, as long as they would pay to have it hauled off.

“They thought it was total junk, and so did everybody else,” Hugh McKean says.

Today, the centerpiece of the Met’s American Wing is a Tiffany window and the Tiffany loggia from Laurelton Hall given by the McKeans.