Morse museum free Fridays
Free Fridays at The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art. From April 9-30, appointments to visit the Museum will be free.
Appointments must be made in advance and are available, space permitting, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays. Online, appointments for free Fridays during the month of April may be found under the “Spring at the Morse” ticket category.
Plan Your Visit
To maximize visitor and staff safety, the Morse has implemented a rigorous cleaning protocol, modified its admissions procedures to reduce direct staff and visitor contact, temporarily revised its public hours, limited the number of people allowed in the galleries at one time, and set new visitor guidelines. These measures are designed to protect our visitors and staff from illness and to reduce as much as possible the spread of the infectious COVID-19 virus.
Spring Celebration
Free appointments Tuesday, March 30, through Saturday, April 3, and Fridays, April 9, 16, 23, and 30. These special appointments may be reserved at no charge under the “Spring at the Morse” ticket category on admissions.morsemuseum.org/mainstore. The Morse is offering FREE APPOINTMENTS during the Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival on Friday, May 14, and Saturday, May 15. To redeem, be sure to use the promo code WPAF when booking your appointment.
- $6 Adults
- $5 Seniors age 60 and older
- $1 Students (with valid ID)
- Free for children younger than 12
Appointments
Appointments allow us to accommodate social distancing guidelines. Groups are limited to five, and a maximum of five visitors will be admitted at fifteen-minute intervals. We ask visitors (including Morse Museum Members) to use our new appointment and payment system. Member admission is, of course, free. To make an appointment, visit admissions.morsemuseum.org/mainstore or call (407) 644-1429. Immediate or same-day appointments may be available. There may be times when the Museum may be entered only through the rear entrance.
Charles Hosmer Morse
Charles Hosmer Morse (1833–1921), in whose memory the Morse Museum was created, was the grandfather of Jeannette Genius McKean who founded the Museum and formed its collection with her husband, Hugh F. McKean. A distant relative of the famous inventor and painter Samuel F. B. Morse, Charles Hosmer Morse was the controlling partner in Fairbanks, Morse & Co. headquartered in Chicago.
He was born in 1833 in St. Johnsbury Center, Vermont, and joined E. & T. Fairbanks & Co. in 1850 at the age of 17. In 1865, Mr. Morse established the first branch of the business that was to become known as Fairbanks, Morse & Co. During the next three decades, Mr. Morse transformed a company whose primary product was scaled into a diversified manufacturing firm that supplied a wide variety of machinery that fueled the dramatic industrial growth of America in the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries.
Presses, trucks, railroad cars, motors (including the internal combustion engine), and other machinery and machine components came from Fairbanks, Morse & Co., making Charles Hosmer Morse a man of great wealth and a major factor in the nation’s development into a world power.
Like his counterparts of the period, Mr. Morse enjoyed a national perspective and invested over a wide spectrum. Having visited Winter Park, Florida, in the mid-1880s Mr. Morse selected this little town not only for investment but to become his winter home. Winter Park became his primary home following his retirement in 1915. Mr. Morse helped organize the Winter Park Country Club and leased the land to the club for one dollar per year. He donated other land and buildings to a variety of civic organizations, usually charging some token price to avoid the public flurry that would have come with a full donation.
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