[Aaron Henkin] Aaron Henkin here from WYPR with BMA lighting designer Kel Millionie. [Kel Millionie] Each of these little tiny cubes of glass each resonate light differently. So there's lots of different ways to experience this work, lots of different ways to light this work. And so my job as a lighting designer in our museum is to try and make this look as glorious as possible at all different times of the day. And you'll get natural light from one side of the column, and artificial gallery light from the other side of the column. So you get a really nice perspective of what these pieces may look like in many different settings. [Aaron Henkin] Kel, as I'm talking to you, I'm realizing what an invisible but important presence you are here at the museum. What you do is essential here. [Kel Millionie] I love that you said invisible because if I'm doing my job right, I am invisible. I think it's really, really interesting that people don't look up and don't notice the lighting. And that's when I think I've done my best work.

[David Park Curry] It's hard to miss these mosaic columns. They are covered with thousands of little glass tiles. The two columns, if you look carefully, you'll see that one's got a peacock blue tile. There's a general shading that's similar, but you won't find them matching. It's all done by hand. [Aaron Henkin] They were designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, and executed by workers in his busy studio. [David Park Curry] He's very much influenced here by knowledge of ancient arts. Mosaics were a very big deal in Greek and Roman times. We look at the gold tassel work. It's like what you'd expect on a fat upholstered chair, but it's executed in another glass called Cypriot glass, which he specifically developed to have a kind of a pitted rough surface that was to remind you of the ancient glass that was being dug up at various sites around the world. These columns, however, were made for the Tiffany Studios venue in midtown Manhattan, and it would've been a glorious, eye-popping set up with actual fabric between the curtains in the studio shop.

[Aaron Henkin] Hi, Aaron Henkin here with mosaic artist Rick Shelley. And Rick, these columns are here in the museum right next to a window, and I imagine that's no mistake. [Rick Shelley] In ancient churches and cathedrals, they'll always put a mosaic opposite a window so that you get the light coming in, bouncing off the mosaic and back to your eye. Step out into the atrium and don't miss the wonderful ancient stone mosaics from Antioch. In those you not only have patterns, but you have images of birds and lions, and also figures of people done in mosaic work. So when you look at these columns by Tiffany, you can see that he's in a long line of tradition going way back to the ancient times.