Friday, March 22, 7 p.m.
Butterworth Center, 1105 Eighth Street, Moline IL
Serving as the latest guest speaker in the venue's “Evenings at Butterworth” series, noted scholar and historian Rolf Achilles will deliver a fascinating program on the art of stained glass – and one of its chief innovators in particular – in the Butterworth Center's March 22 presentation Tiffany & Other Great Midwestern Panes.
An independent art historian, curator of the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows, and adjunct faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Achilles is writer and lecturer on various topics related to preserving American artistic heritage, as well as the author of several books on Chicago architecture and commerce. He currently sits on the boards of the Richard H. Driehaus Museum and the Glessner House Museum, among other nonprofit cultural organizations, and helped found and curate both the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows and the Macy’s Pedway Collection of Windows. Achilles continues to design and curate exhibits for other area museums, and his national and international honors include being inducted in the Guild of Glaziers, being awarded the Freedom of the City of London, and serving as an honorary ambassador of the city of Hamburg, Germany, to the city of Chicago.
During his Butterworth Center visit, Achilles will bring his stained-glass-movement expertise to life by sharing the beginnings of Tiffany & Co. in 1880s New York, as well as the aesthetic changes contributed by the immigrant-rich Midwest to stained-glass windows, lamps, and mosaic design. Funded by the William Butterworth Foundation, Tiffany & Other Great Midwestern Panes is also being presented in conjunction with the Figge Art Museum's current exhibition Louis Comfort Tiffany: Treasures from the Driehaus Collection. Drawn from the collection of the Richard H. Driehaus Museum in Chicago and boasting jewel-like colors and iridescent surfaces, the exhibit features 62 exemplary works created by Tiffany's studios, and from its small blown-glass vases to its breathtaking stained-glass windows, Treasures from the Driehaus Collection demonstrates the craftsmanship and inventiveness of Tiffany artisans.
Rolf Achilles will deliver his presentation Tiffany & Other Great Midwestern Panes at Moline's Butterworth Center at 7 p.m. on March 22, admission is free, and more information is available by calling (309)743-2701 or visiting ButterworthCenter.com.
