Viewing: News

Imagine Museum benefactor Trish Duggan, and museum executive director Nate Jessup, at hard-hat tour. courtesy: imagine museum.

Tuesday February 14, 2017 | by Gabi Gimson

A brand-new glass museum set for grand opening in St. Petersburg, Florida, by end of 2017

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, Museums, News, Opening

St. Petersburg, Florida, may seem an unlikely hub for glass art, but the city that holds the world's record for the most consecutive days of sunshine is also soon to be home to a new museum devoted entirely to the material as a medium of sculpture. The brand-new Imagine Museum is currently being installed in a repurposed building just nine blocks away from the Morean Arts Center, which boasts a now-permanent collection of Dale Chihuly’s work. The Imagine Museum expects to have a grand opening before the end of 2017, but it is already hosting events even as it undergoes a major renovation of its building, which has in previous incarnations been a bank, nightclub, and, most recently, a charter school. The museum is in the process of installing signage and building out its museum store. The first floor is on schedule to be complete by the end of February, where it will host occasional activities and events before the museum officially opens.

Ulysses Grant Dietz is the chief curator as well as the decorative arts curator at the Newark Museum.

Monday February 6, 2017 | by Gabi Gimson

Newark Museum chief curator Ulysses Dietz to kick off 2017 lecture series at the Art Glass Forum

FILED UNDER: Announcements, News

The Art Glass Forum in New York City is holding its first meeting of 2017 this evening, February 7 with a presentation by Newark Museum chief curator as well as decorative arts curator Ulysses Grant Dietz. Since he was appointed decorative arts curator in 1980, Dietz has curated over 100 exhibitions covering a wide range of historic periods, including Studio Glass. The title of his talk is "Modern from Day 1: Collecting Glass at the Newark Museum, 1912 to Today." Dietz was named chief curator of the museum in 2012, and will focus his talk on the wide span of the historic and contemporary glass objects in the Newark Museum's permanent collection.

Thursday February 2, 2017 | by Andrew Page

CALL FOR PAPERS: October 2017 UrbanGlass academic symposium to focus on post-graduate outcomes

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Call for Submissions, Events, News

For its third biennial academic symposium, UrbanGlass is again partnering with the Robert M. Minkoff Foundation to present an international gathering of department heads, professors, and educators to discuss best practices in the lecture hall and studio. The upcoming symposium, titled "Issues in Glass Pedagogy: Curriculum and Career," will take place from October 12 -14, 2017 in New York City, and will examine the factors that determine students' post-graduate success. Among the areas of interest are investigations into the economic challenges facing professional contemporary artists, as well as the educational interventions that are most effective in preparing graduates to thrive. The symposium organizers are now accepting proposals for lecture presentations, panel dicussions, and studio demonstrations that address how academic curricula and programs can affect career outcomes, with a special focus on best practices, statistical analysis, and case studies.

Carol Prusa, Spooky Action. Glass. courtesy: boca raton museum

Wednesday February 1, 2017 | by Awura Barnie-Duah

OPENING: Berengo’s Glasstress project comes to Boca Raton, Florida

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, Museums, New Work, News, Opening

Adriano Berengo is back with another Glasstress exhibition, this time in partnership with an art museum in Boca Raton, Florida. Known for bringing artists who don't usually utilize glass as a medium together with his team of glass maestros in Murano, Berengo has built Glasstress into an art-world brand since it debuted as a collateral exhibition at the 2009 Venice Bienalle. In addition to his Glasstress exhibits at the international exhibition, Berengo has also been developing "Glasstress World" in which Berengo Project artists display their work in partnership with major museums around the globe.

Helen Lee won the top prize for her work entitled KowTow. courtesy: bullseye glass

Tuesday January 31, 2017 | by Gabi Gimson

OPENING: Bullseye Glass to unveil its “Emerge/Evolve 2016” exhibit at Pittsburgh Glass Center

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work, News, Opening

This Friday, February 3rd, the Pittsburgh Glass Center will present "Emerge/Evolve 2016," an annual juried exhibition of kiln-glass artists organized by the Bullseye Glass Company of Portland, Oregon. "Emerge 2016" will feature up-and- coming artists who participated and placed in Bullseye’s ninth biennial juried competition for kiln-glass. Of the 370 contenders, more than 40 artists—representing 16 different countries—were selected as finalists, and a total of seven prizes were awarded. The panel of jurors included Stefano Catalani, curator at the Bellevue Arts Museum; Kim Harty, assistant professor of crafts/glass, College for Creative Studies, Detroit; and Sue Taylor, professor of art history at Portland State University.

Martin Blank pictured with one of the two glass artworks that animate a city park in lower Manhattan.

Friday January 27, 2017 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: Martin Blank on the installation of his NYC public-art project

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Architecture, New Work, News, Public Art

Martin Blank has called the concept of "flow" the unifying theme of the last 25 years of his career as an artist, and this is readily apparent in his latest public art commission. Set to be unveiled in Spring 2017 in the small city park next to the recently opened Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown, Blank has created two working fountains in which the multiple glass elements mediate the falling water, and reference it in its cascading forms that appear like splashing water, or eddies. Contrasting with the restrained "New Classical" style of the building's architect, Robert A. M. Stern, Blank's exuberant work animates and enlivens the exterior space with its celebration of gravity and the shared fluidity of water and glass. The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet spoke to Blank after installation was complete, but before the water would be turned back on, about the project that he calls "the hardest installation he's done in his career."

Works by Ron Desmett and Kathleen Mulcahy to be displayed on January 26th at Alfstad& Contemporary. courtesy: alfstad& contemporary

Wednesday January 25, 2017 | by Awura Barnie-Duah

OPENING: Work by Kathleen Mulcahy and the late Ron Desmett featured at Florida glass art event

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Events, Exhibition, News

The late Ron Desmett (1948-2016) and his wife, Kathleen Mulcahy will both have their work featured at Alfstad& Contemporary, which will kick off the Third Annual Sarasota Art Glass Weekend on January 27th. A collaboration between Longboat Key Center for the Arts, a division of Ringling College, and Habatat Galleries of Michigan, the weekend event will include exhibitions, auctions, studio tours, talks by internationally-known artists, glass-blowing demonstrations, and private tours of the museum featuring glass. The event's opening reception will take place on Thursday, January 26th.

Dafna Kaffeman. Wolf 01, 2010. Glass, aluminum, and silicon. courtesy: the artist and lorch + seidel contemporary, berlin.

Tuesday January 24, 2017 | by Gabi Gimson

MassArt gallery unveils first glass exhibit in 30-year history as major Boston arts venue

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, Museums, New Work, News, Opening

On Monday evening, when the Bakalar & Paine Galleries at Massachusetts College of Art and Design unveiled its new exhibition, "VITREOUS BODIES: Assembled Visions in Glass," it marked the first time glass art was displayed at this prime visual arts venue in the Fenway-Kenmore area of Boston, a cultural destination. Bringing together works by 13 multidisciplinary artists including Dan Clayman, who had spent the Fall semester at MassArt as a visiting professor, the show also includes work by an international group made up of Kanik Chung, Petah Coyne, Mona Hatoum, Timothy Horn, Michael Joo, Dafna Kaffeman, Jacob Kassay, Maya Lin, Lucy and Jorge Orta, Arlene Shechet, Thaddeus Wolfe, and Rob Wynne. Also debuting on Monday, but at a different location on the MassArt campus was a second work by Clayman, his largest installation to date. (Disclosure: Clayman serves as an advisor for the Robert M. Minkoff Academic Symposium at UrbanGlass, which is organized by GLASS magazine.)

The full overview of the Rainfield work with a human figure to indicate the massive 60-foot-long scale of the work.

Monday January 23, 2017 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Dan Clayman’s largest installation to date debuts at MassArt

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Etsy-find, New Work, News, Public Art

More than 10,000 individual glass droplets have been strung up in the atrium of the Design and Media Center at Boston's MassArt, the culmination of a project by the college's visiting professor Dan Clayman that is being unveiled this evening. The work is entitled Rainfield, and was constructed during "Structured Light," an interdisciplinary course with 18 MassArt students who worked alongside the Providence-based artist to realize this piece that measures 60-feet long. The completed project represents the largest-scale work Clayman has completed, the latest in his assemblage works that aggregate multiple glass elements to create a massive structure, as he did in his 2014 work Dispersion at Brown University. The installation will remain on view through summer,

Jutta-Annette Page

Tuesday January 17, 2017 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: Curator Jutta-Annette Page on leaving Toledo to lead new museum in Virginia

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Museums, News

Jutta-Annette Page, the senior curator of glass and decorative arts at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio since 2003, will be leaving her position of 13 years for a new job as director of the Barry Art Museum, a brand-new institution to be built at Old Dominion University in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Page will be moving to Virginia in March 2017 to begin the hard work of getting a new art museum off the ground. The building itself is yet-to-be-completed but there is no shortage of tasks, including hiring a full- and part-time staff, developing the museum's systems and protocols, and planning its inaugural exhibition of its namesake's collection. Last summer, Richard and Carolyn Barry announced a $35-million gift to Old Dominion, where they both have professional and personal connections (his father was a professor and he himself served as rector, while she taught there for a time as an adjunct). When it opens in 2018, the Barry Art Museum permanent collection will include more than 200 works of art, with over 100 works from the Studio Glass era. In an extended telephone interview, the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet discussed Page's tenure in Toledo, what interested her about the new opportunity, and some of her early plans.

Glass: The UrbanGlass Quarterly, a glossy art magazine published four times a year by UrbanGlass has provided a critical context to the most important artwork being done in the medium of glass for more than 40 years.