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HUGH F. MCKEAN
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| HUGH F. McKEAN |
Hugh F. McKean (1908-1995), who with his wife, Jeannette Genius McKean, built the internationally important Morse Museum collection, was an educator and an artist as well as a collector.
President of Rollins College from 1951 to 1969, he was the director of the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art from its founding as the Morse Gallery of Art on the Rollins College campus in 1942 until his death in 1995.
He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Rollins College in 1930 and a Master of Arts degree from Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. in 1940. He studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Art Students League in New York City, L'Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris and Harvard University.
His civic, educational, cultural and philanthropic contributions to the community and the state were reflected in his honorary degrees and service on foundations and boards of trustees. In 1961, he received a Doctor of Humanities from Stetson University; in 1963, a Doctor of Space Education from Brevard Engineering School (now Florida Institute of Technology); in 1970, a Doctor of Laws from the University of Tampa, and in 1972, a Doctor of Fine Arts from Rollins College .
Although his study of art was broad, throughout his life he firmly believed art should be made accessible and understandable to everyone. He wrote sensitive and often humorous labels to describe the work on exhibit at the Morse, sometimes shocking visitors accustomed to a more academic approach, but more often delighting those who appreciated his refreshingly unique way of looking at art.
In many imaginative ways Hugh and Jeannette McKean brought art to the Central Florida community. They started Christmas in the Park to bring music and art to families during the holiday season; they converted a van into the Morse Mobile Museum that travels to public schools and retirement communities without charge; and once they staged a Drive-By exhibit to allow passengers to view from their cars Tiffany leaded-glass windows placed along Center Street in Winter Park.
As a young painter in 1930, Hugh McKean was selected by the Tiffany Foundation to join other artists at the exquisite, art-filled mansion built by Louis Comfort Tiffany at Oyster Bay, Long Island. There the artists worked independently with gentle critiques from Tiffany , who invited them to join him for evenings of organ music in the grand fountain court. The experience etched so a vivid an impression that a half century later McKean wrote about Tiffany the man, his art and his period with a sense of immediacy in The "Lost" Treasures of Louis Comfort Tiffany (Doubleday, 1980). By that time McKean and his wife had built a Tiffany collection considered to be the most comprehensive in the world, and he could draw from it to show virtually every medium Tiffany explored.
The McKeans' built their collection for others to enjoy and learn from art, and always dreamed of a larger museum designed to exhibit it. While Hugh McKean did not live to see the opening of the new museum at 445 Park Avenue North, he was vitally involved in its design and its concept: To enrich the cultural life of the community and thereby carry into the future the legacy Charles Hosmer Morse and his granddaughter Jeannette Genius McKean left to Winter Park.
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