The Corning Museum's glassblowing barge readies for its summer-long tour of New York State waterways

The Corning Museum of Glass has announced the dates and times of ports of call for its four-month waterway tour known as "GlassBarge," a project which commemorates both the 1868 relocation of the Brooklyn Flint Glass Company from Brooklyn to Corning, New York and the last 150 years of glassmaking in Corning. The summer tour will bring glass-blowing demonstrations along the same route that the Brooklyn Flint Glass Company took through the Hudson River and Erie Canal. The company shipped its glass blowing equipment via the New York Waterways to Corning, where it eventually became the corporation known as Corning, Inc., which founded the museum in 1951. To honor this pivotal relocation, CMoG conceived of and built a 30-by-80-foot barge equipped with patented all-electric glassblowing equipment meant to bring the history of glass out of the museum and into the towns along New York State canals and rivers. Furthermore, the tour, which will kick-off on May 17 at Brooklyn Bridge Park (in conjunction with UrbanGlass, which publishes the Hot Sheet), is meant to honor the continued importance that waterways have on New York’s culture, communities, and industries. After its start in Brooklyn, the tour will conclude on land in Corning on September 22nd with a community-wide celebration. Before its end though, the tour will be hitting Poughkeepsie, Albany, Buffalo, and Seneca Falls, among other cities throughout the summer. The full list and accompanying dates are below.

Tuesday April 3, 2018 | by Andrew Page

The Museum of Arts and Design announces its new director will be Cranbrook's Christopher Scoates

The Museum of Arts and Design has selected Christopher Scoates as its next Nanette L. Laitman Director. Currently leading the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum, Scoates will bring a diverse range of accomplishments in his four years at the Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, art college including building an experimental media department, recruiting a more diverse board, and proven proficiency in fundraising, all of which were cited as highlights of his track record in the official announcement by the New York institution that has seen a parade of directors come and go. Glenn Adamson took over from MAD's long-serving director Holly Hotchner in 2013. He was replaced in 2016 by Jorge Daniel Veneciano, who served only five months at the post before resigning in January 2017. As a new search was underway, MAD board president Michele Cohen served as interim director, and she will be succeeded by Scoates when he officially takes the reins on July 1, 2018.

The cover of the most recent issue of New Glass Review.

Thursday March 29, 2018 | by Allison Adler

A longtime exhibition in print, Corning's New Glass Review will expand to include a major museum exhibit in 2019

FILED UNDER: Call for Submissions

For 40 years, glass artists, collectors, and curators have eagerly awaited the arrival of the annual Corning Museum of Glass publication New Glass Review as a rich and authoritative guide to some of the most important new work in glass from around the world. (Note: A special bonus for Glass magazine subscribers is a complimentary copy of New Glass Review bundled with each summer's issue) Under the leadership of the museum's new curator of modern and contemporary glass Susie Silbert, the next edition of this seminal publication will be significantly expanded, resulting in not only a fully redesigned publication but accompanied by an exhibition of the same name at the museum's Contemporary Art + Design Wing, all in a bid to expand the impact and prominence of the New Glass project.

Natsuki Katsukawa, Microworld Specimen, 2016. Blown and fused glass. H 23, W 34, D 34 cm. photo: natsuki katsukawa. courtesy: glassmuseet ebeltoft.

Tuesday March 27, 2018 | by Allison Adler

Once-a-decade European exhibition surveying emerging artists goes on view at a second venue in Sunderland, England

FILED UNDER: Exhibition

For the first time in its 40-year history, the "Young Glass" survey exhibition of new talent has traveled from Denmark’s Glasmuseet Ebeltoft — which, from its location in the old port of the town of Ebeltoft, has hosted the once-every-10-year event for the past four decades — to an additional venue. The second location is appropriately enough, another port and the site of a former shipyard in Sunderland, England, that now hosts The National Glass Centre at the University of Sunderland. This edition of "Young Glass" includes the works of 57 of “the finest young, international artists working in glass” (in this case, "young" being defined as being born after January 1, 1982) from 18 countries. The exhibition introduces fresh perspectives and innovative works to an area eager to cultivate and revive its artistic and cultural life.

Robin Rogers, who has been running the Perry Glass Studio as interim director, will now hold the full title. photo: eckard wheeler

Tuesday March 27, 2018 | by Valerie Hughes

The Chrysler Makes it Official: Interim manager Robin Rogers is the new Glass Studio manager and program director

When Charlotte Potter left the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, last fall, her outsize role as the museum's Glass Studio manager and program director was filled on an interim basis by longtime assistant manager and technician Robin Rogers. Now the Chrysler has made it official and removed the "interim" from Rogers' title as the Perry Glass Studio manager and program director. In a prepared statement, museum director Erik Neil said he was pleased with Rogers’ performance filling in for Charlotte, adding that Rogers was “very effective in his interim role, increasing participation in classes and programs.” Not only that, but Neil also praised Rogers’ artistic practice.

Close-up of jellyfish tentacle by Kait Rhoads. courtesy: kait rhoads.

Monday March 26, 2018 | by Valerie Hughes

Artist Kait Rhoads taps the social aspects of glass work to spread the word about ocean ecology (and celebrate her 50th)

From her murrini-dappled blown vessels to her woven copper-wire-and-glass assemblages, Kait Rhoads' works are often inspired by the colors, forms, and patterning of oceanic forms. Her connection to the water was forged when her family lived on a sailboat in the Bahamas and U.S. Virgin Islands during her childhood. To celebrate her upcoming 50th birthday on March 31, Rhoads is having a party that will bring together her love of the aquatic, her glass artwork, and her social network for a good cause. She is inviting friends and volunteers to come participate in the construction of jellyfish tentacles for a large-scale art project, which will be displayed at the totally renovated Pacific Seas Aquarium set to replace the 52-year-old North Pacific Aquarium at the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma. The new aquarium is set to open in Summer 2018. When completed, Rhoads’ project will consist of three large-scale glass jellyfish, each roughly six feet long, that will function as chandeliers in the aquarium’s atrium.

Thursday March 22, 2018 | by Andrew Page

In Memoriam: Ulrica Hydman Vallien (March 24, 1938 - March 21, 2018)

Prominent Swedish artist and designer Ulrica Hydman Vallien, whose dramatic painted glass designs of intertwined snakes and floral imagery, as well as expressive animal and human faces, became synonymous with the identity of the Kosta-Boda glass company for the past four decades, died suddenly just days before her 80th birthday, which would have been this coming Saturday. The news broke via her husband Bertil Vallien's brief but poignant Facebook posting yesterday: "My beloved ulricas warm heart stopped beating Tonight. An incomprehensible loss. Bertil"

Carole Frève at work.

Tuesday March 20, 2018 | by Valerie Hughes

EXHIBITION: Carol Frève makes a literal "connection" using the compatibility of glass and copper in Montreal show

Carole Frève is known for combining glass and copper in projects that contain a narrative essence, drawing not only the eye but human emotion. Currently on view through March 30, 2018, the Espace VERRE Gallery presents Carole Frève’s exhibition, "Connectivity." The works featured in the exhibition ponder the effect an electric current has on copper plating. With the integration of electric currents, sensors, LEDs, and integrated circuits, Frève wishes to establish a dialogue between the art and viewer. She encourages them to draw their own conclusions, to pose questions and find answers within themselves and the art.

Former Corning curator of modern and contemporary glass Tina Oldknow pictured in 2012. courtesy: the corning museum of glass

Tuesday March 20, 2018 | by Allison Adler

LECTURE: Tina Oldknow will dissect the American Studio Glass Movement in New York City presentation

FILED UNDER: Events

This Thursday, curator and critic Tina Oldknow will present a public lecture “A Short History of the American Studio Glass Movement, from Beginning to End” at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. Oldknow, who describes her upcoming talk as an “informal recap of the history of the American Studio Glass movement,” brings a unique perspective to this topic as she presided over the restructuring and expansion of the contemporary glass collections at The Corning Museum of Glass and its Contemporary Art and Design Gallery. This new wing debuted in 2015, adding thousands of feet of exhibition space for new, larger-scale artworks in glass, while also creating new opportunities to define the Studio Glass movement and its influence on contemporary artists working in the material. She explained, “I feel it is important to distinguish what happened in the United States from what happened in Europe, Australia, and Japan, for example, because all those histories are parallel but separate.”

Sibylle Peretti, Where The Rubies Grow I and Where the Rubies Grow II, 2018. Glass. H 23, W 12, D 12 in.

Thursday March 15, 2018 | by Allison Adler

OPENING: Sibylle Peretti's exhibit, debuting tonight at the Chrysler Museum, explores the human yearning for connection to nature

FILED UNDER: Exhibition

Today, the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, unveils the simultaneously somber and captivating works of Sibylle Peretti in "Promise and Perception: The Enchanted Landscapes of Sibylle Peretti," organized by the museum's former curator of glass Diane Wright, who left recently to become curator of glass at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. Wright describes Peretti as composing "poetic narratives about the relationship between humans and the natural world." Peretti herself, in a YouTube video, expands on this idea, describing her work as dealing with human failings and our inability to find harmony and unity with nature. "Promise and Perception" combines new and old works to introduce audience members to Peretti's immersive and poetic narratives while encouraging contemplation on the potential of achieving harmony with the natural world.

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