In Memoriam: Paul Gumbinner (1942–2026)

The chair of the UrbanGlass board from 2001–2005, Paul Gumbinner died at his home in New York City on April 3, 2026, surrounded by his wife, Amye Price Gumbinner, and his children Liz and Jeff. A father and a husband, Gumbinner was also a glass collector, an ad-man, and a recruiter of advertising talent. He was active in the New York City-based Metropolitan Contemporary Glass Group. Fellow glass collector Fred Sanders credits Gumbinner for recruiting him to the UrbanGlass board after the two met at the collector's group.

Lino Tagliapietra poses with the gold-medalist Italian skater Arianna Fontana, the most decorated Italian female athlete with 13 medals to her name, and the "Drop of Fire" vessel he made for the Olympic flame.

Tuesday April 7, 2026 | by Andrew Page

The story behind Lino's Olympic Torch project

When the 2026 Winter Olympics closing ceremonies took place last month at the 2,000-year-old Verona Arena, Italian culture was on prominent display alongside the athletes from around the world. Appropriate for the city Shakespeare chose as the location for Romeo and Juliet, the ceremony included Italian ballet, Italian opera, and, for the symbolic carrying of the flame, an Italian glass vessel artfully designed and hand-blown by the most famous Italian glassblower in the world,

Friday March 13, 2026 | by Andrew Page

Peter Bowles awarded the 2025 Tom Malone Glass Prize

Australian glassblower Peter Bowles has been awarded the 2025 Tom Malone Glass Art Prize. The 23-year-old annual award recognizes the most important work in glass by an Australian artist. As part of the prize, Bowles's work is on exhibit through April 6, 2026, at Linton & Kay Galleries location in Cottesloe, Australia, along with the other 23 short-listed artists. Bowles has been a frequent finalist for major glass prizes, and he currently lives and works from his studio in Northern Tasmania. The longest-running Australian contemporary art prize that includes buying the work, the Tom Malone Glass Art Prize provides $20,000 (roughly $14,000 in USD) as well as the exhibition of the winning artwork first at Linton & Kay before moving into its final home at a state art institution.

Friday March 6, 2026 | by Andrew Page

CALL FOR ENTRIES: University museum seeks applicants for a juried exhibition of artwork involving light and translucency

"To See Through" is the title of a brand-new national juried exhibition curated by Katherine Gray. It explores light, translucency, and "all the ways we look beyond the surface," she says. Widely known as the "resident evaluator" of five seasons of Netflix's Blown Away reality program, Gray is chair of the Department of Art and Design at the University of California, San Bernadino, and interim co-director of the Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art (RAFFMA), which opened in 1996 and has become an important cultural landmark in the region, known for its extensive holdings of Egyptian antiquities.

Tuesday March 3, 2026 | by Andrew Page

Hot off the Presses: The Spring 2026 edition of Glass (#182)

A luscious nebula of colors—pale tangerine, soft celadon, diffuse chartreuse, and intense purple—radiates off the cover of the just-published Spring edition of Glass. This chromatic universe is actually a close-up photo of a glass sheet handmade by glassblowing virtuoso Elliot Walker, who took top honors in the second season of the Netflix reality show Blown Away in 2021. Walker has been busy building his business in the years since, but a recent fascination with artisanal hand-made sheet glass was sparked by his discovery the skill had been deemed "extinct" in his native England. As the author of the cover article, Sahana Ramakrishnan, discovered in researching the article, Walker is just one of many top glass artists who have been exploring the fabrication of their own sheet glass, and she includes interviews with David King, Jocelyne Prince, Liesl Schubel, and Romina Gonzales.

Thursday January 22, 2026 | by Andrew Page

The latest Glass Quarterly LIVE!, with Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez, is now available

In the latest episode of Glass Quarterly LIVE!, available on YouTube and Spotify , Glass Quarterly editor Andrew Page leads an in-depth discussion of the Adele and Leonard Leight Residency and exhibition at the Speed Museum with its first-ever recipient, Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez, along with the author of the feature article about the project, William V. Ganis, on the sixth edition of Glass Quarterly LIVE!

Thursday January 15, 2026 | by Andrew Page

Corey Pemberton and Norwood Viviano share their thoughts at being named 2026 United States Artists Fellows

Artists Corey Pemberton and Norwood Viviano were both named as 2026 United States Artist Fellows. The award provides an unrestricted grant of $50,000, as well as a range of services such as financial planning and legal advice. Each year, an anonymous nomination process is conducted, polling a selected group of "arts professionals"in a process that produces a list, which is then reviewed by 30 panelists in a process that develops a list of finalists. The final step is approval by the Board of Trustees.

A 2018 photo of Vaclav Cigler

Tuesday January 13, 2026 | by Andrew Page

IN MEMORIAM: Václav Cigler (1929–2026)

The family of Václav Cigler have announced the acclaimed Czech artist passed away on January 8, 2026. He died in Prague at the age of 96 after a career of exploring pure geometry and light using the optical clarity of glass in an approach that influenced generations of artists.

Thursday December 4, 2025 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The WInter 2025 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#181)

A triangle of crimson orange glass meets a vertical rectangle of pale emerald, which, when you look closer, you realize also features bisecting layers of clear glass, adding to the geometric complexity. There's a reflection, but you can also see through the different layers of glass. The time it takes to figure out what you're looking at in the detail of Larry Bell's 2025 Cantaloupe but Honeydew on the cover of the Winter 2025 edition of Glass is the point. Much, if not all of Larry Bell's glass sculpture is concerned with light, space, and perception. In this issue's cover article, Bell shares his journey from dropping out of art school to discovering the power of glass while working in a frame shop, to becoming one of the most important American artists and a pioneer of the Light and Space Movement. For quite possibly the first time, Bell shares the details of his discovery of the multi-dimensional interactions of glass and light, as well as his journey to mastering thin-film coatings and how he embraced this industrial technology to create artworks that interacted with light in ways the art world had never seen.

Friday November 28, 2025 | by Andrew Page

BLACK FRIDAY SALE: The Glass Quarterly Holiday Bundle is the perfect gift for the season—and all of 2026!

For a limited time only, Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly is offering a holiday bundle that is the gift that keeps on giving, literally.