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When driving to downtown Toledo from 1-75 it’s hard to miss seeing the Toledo Art Museum, or the billboard in front of the building advertising the museum’s most recent exhibit. Currently if you drive by you’ll see a gleaming piece of flowery jewelry, one of the many pieces on display in the exhibit Radiance and Reverie: Jewels from the Collection of Neil Lane that is currently being hosted inside the TMA’s Glass Pavillion.
The exhibit showcases more than brooches and bangles, with gems and jewels adorning everything from goblets and bowties to apothecary jars and cloak clasps. The gallery, open until January 18th, was created and curated by Diane Wright, Senior Curator of Glass and Contemporary Craft at the Toledo Museum of Art, and Emily Stoehrer, Rita J. Kaplan and Susan B. Kaplan Senior Curator of Jewelry at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Their combined efforts over the past three years of designing and planning the displays allow the pieces to be seen by the public in ways that hearken back to the times they were created.
Radiant gems and jewels
The extensive collection hosts items from famous artists like Louis C. Tiffany, all lovingly collected by world-renowned jewelry designer Neil Lane, who is known for creating jewelry for various Hollywood celebrities. All of the pieces are presented at the Museum in beautiful and vibrant spaces that connect with the pieces themselves and some gallery pieces from the main TMA building have been moved into Radiance and Reverie to create an immersive space respective to the time of the jewelry’s creation.
During a preview event for the exhibit back in October, Wright and Stoehrer guided folks through the three rooms that make up the exhibit. Going in chronological order, the first room visitors experience is a round gallery decorated to be reminiscent of 1800s Paris.This is where some of Lane’s oldest and most unique pieces are presented.
Along with necklaces and earrings, decorative bats, gem-covered book covers and lavish silver boxes fill the gallery space. These early pieces, collected by Lane after taking out a loan from a jeweler he was apprenticing under, are some of the oddest in the collection, and show off the broad scope of objects being presented.
Following the Paris room is a corridor filled with works from the 1900s, specifically glass works from the famous Tiffany Company. Lane also had a love of Tiffany glass, and the few pieces of it on display are stunning, from the flowery lampshade providing light to the space, to the framed glass display that gives the impression of staring out a window into a gorgeous impressionistic forest scene.
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A reverie of history
Finally, you make your way into the Hollywood room, decorated in a rose-pink hue with floor lights reminiscent of old-school movie glitz and glamour. In this part of the exhibit jewelry worn by actors and actresses at various film premiers and industry parties is on display.
These pieces also come with a slideshow of red-carpet photos showing celebrities like Ginger Rodgers, Lady Gaga and Madonna wearing the same pieces you can see in the gallery, further highlighting that the pieces are more than art, they’re things people actually used.
Towards the end of the preview day, Wright insisted that everyone present, and most readers of this article, have some piece of jewelry they wear almost daily, whether a ring, bracelet or head accessory. That just goes to show that, while many might think of jewelry and a slight and unimportant thing, it’s actually something almost everyone has, and has important meaning behind. If you can find your way to the Glass Pavillion before Radiance and Reverie: Jewels from the Collection of Neil Lane leaves, you’ll see just how important jewelry can be.
Radiance and Reverie: Jewels from the Collection of Neil Lane
Now-January 18th, 2026
Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavillion, 2444 Monroe St.
Wednesday, Thursday & Sunday 11am-5pm
Friday-Saturday 11am-8pm
Tickets $10
