Crystal Bridges Installs a Rare Tiffany Studios Window as Its Expansion Nears Completion
A century-old Tiffany Studios window has found a new setting at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, where it now glows inside the Visions of America Galleries. The work, Mountain Landscape (Root Memorial Window), was created in 1917 by Agnes Northrup for Tiffany Studios and acquired by the museum in May 2025 from Sunset Ridge Church in San Antonio for an undisclosed price.
The window’s path has been unusually layered. It was originally commissioned by Woodmen of the World, a fraternal life insurance society, and installed in the organization’s Nebraska headquarters. In 1931, Woodmen built a chapel in San Antonio as part of a tuberculosis hospital and again turned to Tiffany Studios, this time commissioning windows to represent the states in which it operated. Mountain Landscape later remained at Sunset Ridge Church, where it had been roped off for about a decade because of insurance liability concerns.
At Crystal Bridges, the window is displayed in a turquoise alcove with customizable lighting, a presentation that emphasizes the saturated color and luminous surface for which Tiffany glass is prized. The installation also arrives alongside another recent addition: Arkansas State Window, a pale lancet window with the state seal, which Sunset Ridge Church donated to the museum. That work joins a wisteria lamp designed by Clara Driscoll, manager of the “Tiffany Girls,” which entered the collection in 2022 through the Benedict Silverman Collection.
The timing is notable. Crystal Bridges turned 15 this year, and the new installation comes ahead of a landmark expansion scheduled for June. Designed by Safdie Architects, the project will add 114,000 square feet to the museum’s facilities, extending a collection that has increasingly used architecture and display to frame American art as a living, evolving story.
