The Glass Art Society has announced that the Chrysler Museum of Art, the main building and neighboring glass studio, will host the 46th annual gathering of the glass art world. With the theme: "Reflections from the Edge: Glass, Art, and Performance," the 2017 conference will run from June 1st through 3rd, 2017, and will be co-chaired by Diane Wright, the glass curator at the Chrysler Museum; Charlotte Potter, manager and program director of the museum's glass studio; and community members Virginia Hitch and Colin McKinnon. Performance art using glass, a focus of the Chrysler Museum of Art Glass Studio under Potter's leadership, will be a central focus of the 2017 event, according to today's announcement. The event will follow the 2016 conference taking place in Corning, New York.
Chrysler museum director Erik Neil said that he hoped that hosting the conference would help raise the profile of the institution's substantial committment to art made from glass, as well as its numerous theatrical performances using the materal. “It will certainly add to the growing acclaim for our glass program across the nation,” Neil said in a prepared statement. This will be the first time the Chrysler Museum of Art has hosted the GAS conference, and it's collection of more than 10,000 mostly decorative art pieces in glass, together with the ambitious program at the glass studio, has established Norfolk, Virginia, as an important place on the glass map. In recent years, the museum also has acquired notable contemporary works in glass by Beth Lipman, Luke Jerram, Etsuko Ichikawa, Steffen Dam, Jun Kaneko, and Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová.
“We could not be more delighted for this opportunity to share our incredible state-of-the-art Studio and superb glass collection with the larger glass community,” said Potter, in a prepared statement. “By focusing on our Studio’s strengths, which highlight process and the performance-oriented nature of glassmaking, we are able to set the stage for the next generation of glassmakers.”
Spurred by the energetic activities of the Chrysler Museum and its glass studio, the city of Norfolk, Virginia, has been developing an arts district named New Energy of Norfolk, or NEON, that aims to establish a multi-media hub of arts activities in the downtown area not far from the museum. In the heart of the NEON district, the Glass Wheel Studio plans to open in November 2015, and should be in full swing by the 2017conference, possibly hosting some of the demos or other activities.
“The Chrysler Museum of Art is extremely pleased to host the 2017 Glass Art Society conference,” Wright said in a prepared statement. “We are eager to welcome so many artists working in the field of glass to Norfolk, a community with a tremendous passion for supporting the arts, especially glass. For this conference we invite the international glass community to explore the deep history that glass has to offer, as well as to highlight some of the future movements in the field. We look forward to rolling out the red carpet in June 2017!”