Moveable Feasts

Moveable Feasts: Entertaining at Glen Burnie is the Museum’s first exhibition to focus on the extensive entertaining that took place at the Glen Burnie House and Gardens in the 1960s. The light-hearted exhibition takes visitors on a stroll through a garden maze to glimpse vignettes of the various “moveable feasts”—brunch, afternoon tea, cocktails, and dinner—that MSV benefactor Julian Wood Glass Jr. (1910–1992) and his partner at the time, R. Lee Taylor (1924–2000), hosted at the site.

Along with providing an engaging glimpse at Glass’s and Taylor’s life at Glen Burnie in the 1960s, the exhibition also details their entertaining traditions and includes more than 100 objects from the house and gardens. Moveable Feasts also features objects in the Museum’s Julian Wood Glass Jr. Collection that have never before been on display! These include a diamond-encircled Cartier pocket watch 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 exhibition also includes interactive elements for all ages. You may fold a dinner napkin into a crown or a peacock at the “Fancy a Fold” station or race against time to set a formal table before time runs out on the “Butler Bamboozle” touch screen. A souvenir bookmark with Lee Taylor’s infamous eggnog recipe is offered at the end of the exhibition.

Organized by the MSV, Moveable Feasts also provides a venue for the display of objects from the Glen Burnie House, which is now closed until 2014 for a preservation project. Notable items previously on view in the house include a silver teapot, ca. 1787, once owned by Francis Scott Key, author of “The Star Spangled Banner;” a tall clock made around 1795 in Winchester, Virginia, by Goldsmith Chandlee for Julian’s ancestors; and two exquisite still-life paintings by Severin Roesen (1815–1872). The exhibition will be on view until the completion of the house preservation project.