The Museum of Glass, Tacoma
Rush to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma before July 11 to save $2. Admission to the leading museum in the Northwest for glass as an art form is about to increase by 20 percent, with general admission rising from $10 to $12. Youth tickets will see only a $1 increase, from $4 to $5. This is the first increase for the museum in six-and-a-half years.
The new ticket price will keep rates for the museum in line with other cultural institutions in the area, says spokesperson Julie Pisto. Compared with neighboring art museums, the new admission price for the Museum of Glass falls squarely in the middle. The Seattle Art Museum, for instance, maintains a general admission fee of $15. Admission at the nearby Bellevue Arts Museum, on the other hand, remains a thrifty $9.
It’s worth noting that the price is in line with the other big museum dedicated exclusively to glass—The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York charges a comparable $12.50 for admission, although admission for teenagers under the age of 19 is free.
Tacoma’s rate increase is designed, in part, to provide additional revenue in a harsh economic climate. “Everybody is trying to keep their resources at a place where they can operate,” says Pisto. “This definitely helps.”
She isn’t worried about the new price affecting public turnout.
“You get your money’s worth at the Museum of Glass,” Pisto says. “It’s really a spectacular place.”
Her case is strengthened by the July 11 opening of Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire, and Shadows, a mid-career retrospective of the work of a major Northwest artist exploring his Native American heritage through the very untraditional medium of glass. Singletary works with the iconography of his ancestral Tlingit culture but applies it to the material of glass to create unexpected visual expression of traditional patterns and motifs.
—Brett Nuckles