The Cuneo Mansion and Gardens are a historic home, art collection and gardens in Vernon Hills, Illinois, built in 1914 and designed by architect Benjamin Marshall of Marshall & Fox. The mansion's first owner was Samuel Insull, an original founder of the General Electric Company. John Cuneo, Sr. purchased the mansion in 1937 after the collapse of the Insull utility empire. Cuneo is best known as the founder of the Cuneo Press and Hawthorn Mellody Dairy. Cuneo had the interior of the Mansion painted with murals from Chicago Ecclesiological Muralist John Mallin. In 2009, the house was donated to Loyola University Chicago.
Vernon Hills is a suburb north of Chicago, Illinois in Lake County, Illinois, United States. The population was 20,120 at the 2000 census, and 25,113 in 2010. Vernon Hills serves as a retail hub for its surrounding area.
Samuel Insull was a British-born American business magnate; an innovator and investor based in Chicago who greatly contributed to creating an integrated electrical infrastructure in the United States. Insull created holding companies that purchased utilities and railroads. He was also responsible for the building of the Chicago Civic Opera House in 1929.
Loyola University Chicago is a private Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1870 by the Jesuits, today Loyola is one of the largest Catholic universities in the United States. Loyola's professional schools have educated generations of local business and civic leaders, and distinguished programs in medicine, nursing, and health sciences are anchored by the nationally recognized Loyola University Medical Center.
The mansion, which remained the family home until the death of Cuneo's widow in 1990, is now an art gallery and historic house museum. It opened its doors to the public for the first time in 1991. The mansion's paintings, tapestries, and other furnishings are the result of the Cuneo family's lifelong collecting. In addition to architecture and art, Cuneo is also known for its grounds, designed by the renowned landscape architect Jens Jensen.
Jens Jensen was a Danish-American landscape architect.
Starting in 1994, the Cuneo family allowed the Village of Vernon Hills to decorate the gardens with holiday lights. [1] People were invited drive through the "Winter Wonderland" light show. The annual show ended in 2014 when Loyola University decided to develop the land. Many of the decorations can still be seen around the Village during the holiday season. [2]
Interpretive tours of the mansion and its collections are conducted by museum guides and staff. The Mediterranean style mansion features an arcaded central hall, a lavish formal dining room and a private chapel. The collections include antique furnishings, Renaissance paintings, tapestries, silver and porcelain.
The Renaissance is a period in European history, covering the span between the 14th and 17th centuries and marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. The traditional view focuses more on the early modern aspects of the Renaissance and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an extension of the middle ages.
The Cuneo Museum has been the backdrop of several noteworthy films set in Chicago. Specifically, many of the outdoor wedding scenes and reception shots for the 1997 romantic comedy My Best Friend's Wedding , starring Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz, were filmed at Cuneo Museum. The museum was also the setting for Witless Protection , starring Larry the Cable Guy, which appeared in 2008.
My Best Friend's Wedding is a 1997 American romantic comedy film directed by P.J. Hogan from a screenplay by Ronald Bass. The film stars Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz and Rupert Everett.
Julia Fiona Roberts is an American actress and producer. She became a Hollywood star after headlining the romantic comedy Pretty Woman (1990), which grossed $464 million worldwide. She has won three Golden Globe Awards, from eight nominations, and has been nominated for four Academy Awards for her film acting, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Erin Brockovich (2000).
Cameron Michelle Diaz is an American actress, writer, and former model. She has frequently appeared in comedies throughout her career, while also earning critical recognition in dramatic films. Her accolades include four Golden Globe Award nominations, three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and a New York Film Critics Award. In 2013, she was named the highest-paid actress over 40 in Hollywood. As of 2018, the U.S. domestic box office grosses of Diaz's films total over $3 billion USD, with worldwide grosses surpassing $7 billion, making her the fifth highest-grossing U.S. domestic box office actress.
Libertyville is a village in Lake County, Illinois, United States and an affluent suburb of Chicago. It is located 5 miles (8 km) west of Lake Michigan on the Des Plaines River. The 2014 census population was 20,512. Located in northeastern Illinois, southwest of Waukegan and west of Lake Forest, its immediate neighbors are Mundelein to the west, Green Oaks, Mettawa, and Rondout to the east, Gurnee to the north, Grayslake to the northwest, and Vernon Hills to the south.
The Walters Art Museum, located in Mount Vernon-Belvedere, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is a public art museum founded and opened in 1934. It holds collections established during the mid-19th century. The Museum's collection was amassed substantially by major American art and sculpture collectors, a father and son: William Thompson Walters, (1819–1894), who began serious collecting when he moved to Paris as a nominal Southern/Confederate sympathizer at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861; and Henry Walters (1848–1931), who refined the collection and made arrangements for the construction of a later landmark building to rehouse it. After allowing the Baltimore public to occasionally view his father's and his growing added collections at his West Mount Vernon Place townhouse/mansion during the late 1800s, he arranged for an elaborate stone palazzo-styled structure built for that purpose in 1905–1909. Located across the back alley, a block south of the Walters mansion on West Monument Street/Mount Vernon Place, on the northwest corner of North Charles Street at West Centre Street.
Whitemarsh Hall was a large estate located on 300 acres (1.2 km2) of land in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, US, and owned by banking executive Edward T. Stotesbury and his wife, Eva. Designed by the "Gilded Age" architect Horace Trumbauer, it was built in 1921 and demolished in 1980. Before its destruction, the mansion was the third largest private residence in the United States. Today, it is regarded as one of the great losses in American architectural history.
The Wawel Castle is a castle residency located in central Kraków, Poland. Built at the behest of King Casimir III the Great, it consists of a number of structures situated around the Italian-styled main courtyard. The castle, being one of the largest in Poland, represents nearly all European architectural styles of medieval, renaissance and baroque periods. The Wawel Royal Castle and the Wawel Hill constitute the most historically and culturally significant site in the country. In 1978 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Historic Centre of Kraków.
The Paine Art Center and Gardens is a preserved historic estate with a mansion and gardens located in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It includes public art galleries and botanic gardens on 3 acres (1.2 ha), and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Cheekwood is a privately funded 55-acre (22 ha) estate on the western edge of Nashville, Tennessee that houses the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art. Formerly the residence of Nashville's Cheek family, the 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) Georgian-style mansion was opened as a museum in 1960.
Charlotte Béatrice de Rothschild was a French socialite, art collector, and a member of the prominent Rothschild banking family of France.
The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens or The Polasek, is a historic site in Winter Park, Florida, United States. It is located at 633 Osceola Avenue on three acres overlooking Lake Osceola. On May 2, 2000, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art is an art museum located on the campus of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. The permanent collection has over 15,000 objects. Admission is free and open to the general public.
The Musée Jacquemart-André is a private museum located at 158 Boulevard Haussmann in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. The museum was created from the private home of Édouard André (1833–1894) and Nélie Jacquemart (1841–1912) to display the art they collected during their lives.
Telfair Museums, in the historic district of Savannah, Georgia, was the first public art museum in the Southern United States. Founded through the bequest of Mary Telfair (1791–1875), a prominent local citizen, and operated by the Georgia Historical Society until 1920, the museum opened in 1886 in the Telfair family’s renovated Regency style mansion, known as the Telfair Academy.
The National Museum of Decorative Arts is an art museum in Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Rinaldo Cuneo, dubbed the Painter of San Francisco, was an American artist known for his landscape paintings and murals.
Thomas P. Barnett, also known professionally as Tom Barnett and Tom P. Barnett, was an American architect and painter from St. Louis, Missouri. Barnett was nationally recognized for both his work in architecture and in painting.
The Richard H. Driehaus Museum is a museum located at 40 East Erie Street on the Near North Side in Chicago, Illinois, near the Magnificent Mile. The museum is housed within the historic Samuel M. Nickerson House, the 1883 residence of a wealthy Chicago banker. Although the mansion has been restored, the Driehaus Museum does not re-create the Nickerson period but rather broadly interprets and displays the prevailing design, architecture, and decorating tastes of Gilded Age America and the art nouveau era in permanent and special exhibitions.
The Garrett Jacobs Mansion is a historic home located in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. Built in 1853 by Samuel George, the home gets its name from its last and most famous owner, Mary Frick Garrett Jacobs, who, with her husband Robert Garrett, transformed the home into a prime example of the Gilded Age mansions of the city.
Rainey Bennett, attended the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago. A renowned artist, illustrator and muralist, Bennett's works have been displayed in major museum art collections.
Vernon Fisher is an artist born in Fort Worth, Texas. He earned a BA in English literature from Hardin–Simmons University in 1967 and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1969. He taught at Austin College and later at University of North Texas.
Coordinates: 42°15′00″N87°57′01″W / 42.2501°N 87.9504°W
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.