Galleries & Exhibitions

FOUNDERS Gallery

 

 

Pictured in text

Anne Wordsworth, 1751, by Francis Cotes (English, 1726-1770).

 

BELOW: The best of the Julian Wood Glass Jr. Collection is detailed in the MSV's book, Treasures of American and English Painting and Decorative Arts from the Julian Wood Glass Jr. Collection. This 250-page book is available in the Museum Store and online.

 

quickfact

The Grand Tour was a time-honored learning tradition in which people pursued their education abroad. Julian Wood Glass Jr. took a Grand Tour almost every year. He visited the great cities, art galleries, museums, and private collections in Britain and Europe to hone his eye, and discern what he liked best in the fields of fine and decorative arts.

Rotating exhibitions drawn from the Museum's Julian Wood Glass Jr. Collection will be on display in the Founders Gallery. The first of these special exhibitions will be Moveable Feasts: Entertaining at Glen Burnie, opening March 5, 2013. This exhibition will mark the Museum’s first interpretive focus on the extensive entertaining that took place at the Glen Burnie House and Gardens after Museum benefactor Julian Wood Glass Jr. acquired the site in 1955.

Entertaining at Glen Burnie involved brunch, afternoon tea, cocktails, and dinner. Moveable Feasts will transport visitors to Glen Burnie as guests of Julian Wood Glass Jr. and then partner R. Lee Taylor.

Developed by an MSV staff team and designed by The 1717 Design Group, Inc., Richmond, the exhibition will invite visitors to learn about these entertaining traditions. To tell this story the gallery has been transformed into an intimate” garden maze;” as visitors move through the maze they will see vignettes that tell the story of each meal.

Moveable Feasts will also give visitors a first-time look at some objects in the collection that have never before been on display. These include jewelry and a dinner jacket worn by Julian Wood Glass Jr. during the cocktail and dinner hours at Glen Burnie, as well as pieces of china and silver from the collection. Among the latter are examples of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century plates and silver serving pieces.

The larger Julian Wood Glass Jr. Collection includes oil paintings, watercolors, pastels, pencil drawings, furniture, and decorative objects from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The work of such artists as Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828), John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), and Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) is included, as is furniture from Boston’s Seymour family of furniture makers and a couch once owned by Queen Charlotte of England.

 

Pictured at top: A detail of a Lady's Tambour Secretary, ca. 1793-1798, by John Seymour (ca. 1738-1848) and Thomas Seymour (active in Boston 1793-1848).