A survey exhibition taking stock of the myriad approaches to glass as a medium for contemporary art opened over the weekend at a contemporary art museum in Connecticut. Entitled "Glass Today: 21st Century Innovations" and running through September 21st, 2014, the exhibition at the New Britain Museum of American Art explores where the material is going in terms of approaches to technique, concept, and aesthetics. The current exhibition is allso a follow-up to a 2008 exhibition at the same institution that examined the first 50 years of studio glass, getting a jump on the raft of 2012 exhibitions that covered the same territory.
A highlight of the exhibiton is the site-specific work by Beth Lipman in which she was asked to respond to the museum's prize Thomas Hart Benton murals. The result, entitled Aspects of (American Life), and made up of a blend of cast and blown-glass elements, was completed last year but is a centerpiece of the new exhibition, and evidence of the ambition of contermporary glass artists to realize work in large scale and in dialogue with other art materials. Lipman's completed work measures some 115 inches tall by 80 inches wide, and 60 inches deep.
According to an exhibition announcement, the goal for the survey show is "to demonstrate the seemingly boundless ways in which artists are continuing to shatter all such expectations by imbuing their work with rich cultural, aesthetic and conceptual value."
Among the artists with work on view: Amber Cowan, Josepha Gasch-Muche, Luke Jerram, Sibylle Peretti, Ivana Sramkova, and Lino Tagliapietra, Norwood Viviano.
IF YOU GO:
"Glass Today: 21st Century Innovations"
Through Sept. 21, 2014
New Britain Museum of American Art
56 Lexington Street
New Britain, CT 06052
tel: 860.229.0257