Originally set for a December 2014 opening, the new North Wing of the Corning Museum of Glass is now going to open to the public on March 20, 2015. The construction of the ambitious expansion project with a $64 million budget is on schedule, according to a Corning Museum spokesperson, but the additional time is needed for installing the 70 works that will be the hallmark of the new 26,000-square-foot gallery dedicated to showcasing the larger scale typical of contemporary work in glass. "We will begin installing our objects in the galleries once the building is complete," writes Yvette Sterbenk, the museum's senior manager of communications in an email exchange with the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet. "As the caretakers of the world’s most important collection of glass, we want to make sure we give ourselves time to do this appropriately. Instead of opening in the winter, we set the opening around the vernal equinox – the start of spring – which gives us a great opportunity to celebrate the idea of light, as befits the new building."
The new North Wing gallery interior and exterior is the work of noted museum architecture firm Thomas Phifer and Partners, and celebrates light and glass with a post-Minimialist design that uses subtle reflectivity and translucent surfaces to integrate with adjacent buidlings and to interact with the natural world. Featuring soaring 20-foot ceilings that will filter natural light into the expansive galleries, the space will allow the museum to showcase monumental works in glass such as Liza Lou's Continuous Mile (2006–08), which is made up of 4.5 million glossy black glass beads woven onto a mile-long cotton rope rolled up and measuring 5 feet in diameter. Purchased in early 2014, the work is an example of the type of work that will be exhibited in the open spaces of the new wing.
But the new collection will not focus exclusively on artists such as Lou, who trained as a painter before discovering glass bead adornment as an intensification of color and surface texture to wide art world acclaim and numerous international museum acquisitions. Other contemporary artists who work primarily with glass but at large scale and in dialogue with the contemporary art world will be included. Among the artists with a high profile in the glass art world whose work will be featured in the new wing are Michael Rogers, Klaus Moje, Karen LaMonte, Katherine Gray, Karen LaMonte, Stansilav Libensky and Jaroslova Brychtova, and Daniel Clayman.
In addition to contemporary art, the new wing will have a dedicated gallery for design, where notable work from the past 25 years will be featured. Design objects by Danny Lane and Christopher Come will share the exhibition area with lighting by Dan Dailey, Maria Grazia Rosin, and René Veenhuizen.