Jeannette Genius McKean
(1909-1989)

Died aged c. 80

Jeannette Genius McKean was born in 1909 and attended the Grand Central Art School and Art Students League in New York City. Exhibitions of her paintings were held throughout the world. Her lifelong interest in Rollins College began in 1926 when she studied there for a summer session. She served on the Rollins College Board of Trustees from 1942 to 1975. In 1942 she founded the Morse Gallery on the Rollins campus and created the Charles Hosmer Morse and Elizabeth Morse Genius McKean Foundation to ensure the gallery would grow and operate independently. Thirteen years after she founded the Morse Gallery, she staged an exhibition of the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Her acquisitions established the nucleus of the most comprehensive collection of his work in the world. McKean was President of the Winter Park Land Company which controlled her grandfather’s (Charles Hosmer Morse) Winter Park holdings. Jeannette Genius McKean died in 1989.

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Jeannette Genius McKean (1909–1989) was a painter, interior decorator, Louis Comfort Tiffany art glass collector, Morse Museum founder and benefactor of Rollins College. She is listed as a Great Floridian. The Jeanette Genius McKean Memorial 5k run is held annually in her honor. McKean was born in Chicago and moved with her parents to New York. She attended Dana Hall and Pine Manor Junior College in Wellesley, Massachusetts and studied art at Grand Central Art School and the Art Students League in New York. Her grandfather, Charles Hosmer Morse, lived in Winter Park, Florida where she settled. She opened the Morse Museum at Rollins College in 1942 and named it for her grandfather. Her husband, Hugh F. McKean, served as director. After his return home from World War II, she married Hugh McKean in 1945.

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