Lift Up Your Hearts!

Jonathan has several pictures of Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass windows that he likes to look at, so we were excited to give him the opportunity to see the real windows at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in nearby Winter Park. Much to our disappointment, many of his favorites were unavailable, being prepared for a special exhibition in New York. So he was unable to see Girl Picking Gourds, one of his favorites, and see the transformation of Butterfly Window between transmitted and reflected light at the push of a button. However, not all of "his" windows were missing, and his eyes lit up when he encountered Young Woman at a Fountain. He delighted, also, in "Tombment!" (The Entombment) particularly since that exhibit featured several studies leading up to the finished window.

It did not take me quite so long this time to remember the lesson I had learned when we visited the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh: When Jonathan wants to be carried and there's no obvious reason for him to be tired, it's often because he wants to see from an adult eye level. The museum is not arranged for the height of a not-yet-two-year-old, even one as tall as Jonathan. Once I realized that, he enjoyed looking at many of the Tiffany vases as well. How glad I was that Heather politely declined the admission clerk's repeated offer of a stroller for him, from which he would have seen little and appreciated less. Only once did he need to be told, by a polite docent, that reaching into the roped-off area could set off an alarm—and not much later she had to say the same thing to an adult.

He enjoyed most of a video about how Tiffany's treasures were rescued from destruction and restored for this beautiful museum; he was not happy to leave before it was finished, but some other people came into the little theater at that point, and we no longer felt free to let him wander around while enjoying the film. So we headed for home, very pleased with Jonathan's first visit to an art museum. "Girl Pick Gourds" will wait for another day.