As one of the finest small art museums in the nation, the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati is accustomed to receiving accolades for its colorful and distinctive collections, displayed in one of the Queen City’s oldest and most elegant residences.
That tradition continues this holiday season as rare, blown-glass ornaments, Victorian angels and Christmas trees made of wire and goose feathers adorn the building during “Antique Christmas at the Taft,” November 21 through January 4. Old-fashioned objects and toys created around the time of the former house’s last inhabitants (1820–1931) decorate the museum during the festive event, as do antique treasures belonging to devoted ornament collectors. Those include Kathy and Greg Gregory of the Golden Glow of Christmas Past hobby group, whose fragile, German glass baubles, crafted from 1885 to 1920, will adorn one of the museum’s feather trees.
The spectacle hardly ends there. Other collectors will share their favorite Christmas delights on a six-foot feather tree in the Music Room, festooned with vintage, tinsel-and-scrap Victorian ornaments; another tree will be trimmed entirely with cornucopias and candy containers. For added cheer at the museum, the May Festival Youth Chorus will perform a holiday concert December 7, and ArtReach, a division of The Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati, will present “A Christmas Carol,” December 14.
The museum is the perfect setting for an antique Christmas. Martin Baum began what was to become The Baum-Longworth-Taft House around 1820; soon, Nicholas Longworth, the city’s first millionaire, bought and expanded the house for his family. Anna Sinton brought her new husband, Charles Phelps Taft, to live in her family home in 1873, and it was here in 1908 that Taft’s half-brother, William Howard Taft, accepted a presidential nomination under the portico.