Friday January 26, 2024 | by Andrew Page

IN MEMORIAM: Glass collector and major philanthropist Sheldon Palley (1933 - 2024) passes away at the age of 90

Sheldon Palley -- businessman, art collector, and philanthropist - passed away on Thursday, January 25, 2024, at the age of 90. He died less than four years after the death of Myrna, his wife of 63 years. Though Palley grew up in Detroit, Michigan, he made Miami, Florida, his home for 75 years. It was while studying for his law degree at the Univesrity of MIami that he met Myrna, who had graduated with a bachelor's degree in education and was teaching art at a junior high school at the time they met.

Thursday January 25, 2024 | by Andrew Page

Phase One of The Corning Studio renovation opens to the public with new facilities and resources for education and the general public

A week or so before Christmas, The Studio of The Corning Museum of Glass reopened its doors to the public, offering visitors entering the new marquee entrance a gleaming new reception desk and facilities for the museum's popular Make Your Own Glass activities. A bank of brand-new sandblasting machines were arranged beside tall crafting tables, where visitors could apply various resists to create a custom design. Assisted glassblowing activities have been expanded thanks to the new modular areas where benches are set up, available to museumgoers or professionals depending on the time of year.

Helen Lee portrait. photo: kaleb autman

Tuesday January 23, 2024 | by Andrew Page

Helen Lee named 2024 United States Artist Fellow, recieves a $50k unrestricted award

Helen Lee, an artist, designer, and educator who heads the glass program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has just been announced as a 2024 United States Artist Fellow. Lee will join 50 other artists, who range from architects to choreographers, and who hail from 22 American states as well as Puerto Rico, as one of those "selected for their artistic vision, contributions to the field, and potential impact of the award on their practice," according to the USArtists press release announcing the 2024 United States Artist fellows.

On view as part of the "Iconic PIeces" exhibition at the Romont Glass Centre's Vitromusée, this 1949 vase, designed by Fluvio Bianconi for Venini, is known as "Vase Fazzoletto," and stands just over 12 inches tall. © vitromusee romont

Thursday January 4, 2024 | by Emma Park

In Romont, Switzerland, the future of glass art in Europe was discussed last Fall while the Vitromusée showcased masterworks of the past and present

At a recent Fall conference titled "Concepts and Aesthetics: New Tendencies in Glass Art (20th-21st centuries)" held at the Romont Glass Centre, Switzerland, questions about the future of glass art were never far from the minds of those in attendance: curators, staff, and professors from glass museums and academic programs around Europe. While in Switzerland itself, where the small Alpine town of Romont is nestled in the foothills of the mountains, the strong Swiss economy and a national dedication to arts funding have largely insulated them from the funding struggles of their peers, the mood was colored by concern about budget cuts. At the September 22nd event, however, anxiety seemed far from the conference venue, itself, ensconced behind the sturdy walls of a castle dating back to the thirteenth century. Here, the Romont Glass Centre consists of a major exhibition space, the Vitromusée, as well as a library and research facility named the Vitrocentre. The center's director, Francine Giese said the Romont has three primary areas of focus on historic and contemporary glassmaking:

Wednesday January 3, 2024 | by Andrew Page

As 2023 turns to 2024, join us for a look back at the Year in Glass

Join us as we take a short spin back in time to the highlights of our coverage in 2023, and thank our subscribers for their support.

Thursday December 21, 2023 | by Jahlil Rush

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Fully-funded MFA degree program at Tulane University is open for Fall 2024 candidates

Graduate student applications for Tulane University’s MFA program in Glass are now being accepted for the Fall 2024 semester. The successful student accepted into the two-year program will be granted a full tuition waiver as well as an "assistantship stipend". The tuition waivers will cover the full cost of tuition for both years of the MFA program. Any additional stipend will be divided up into 20 bimonthly payments during both years.

Architectural rendering of the expansion project done by Saunders + Crouse Architects

Wednesday December 20, 2023 | by Jana Elsayed

The Barry Art Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, will double in size thanks to longtime friendship between art-collecting families

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Museums

Richard and Carolyn Barry, the founders of the Barry Art Museum at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, are planning a major expansion, with the institution that bears their name doubling in size with the planned addition of the Waitzer Wing, named after their late art-collector mentors, philanthropists Richard and Leah Waitzer, who died in 2019 and 2021 respectively. The two couples not only shared a love of art, but the older pair were instrumental in inspiringthe Barrys to begin their collecting many years earlier. That the Weitzer collection would end up finding a home within the museum built to house much of the Barry collection is just the latest development in the intertwined histories of two art-collecting couples.

Curator Jabari Owens-Bailey

Tuesday December 19, 2023 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: Curator Jabari Owens-Bailey on his exhibition "A Two-Way Mirror" at the Museum of Glass

Used in everything from surveillance windows to the infinity boxes of artist Josiah McElheny, a "two-way mirror" is defined by Merriam Webster as "a piece of glass that is a mirror on one side but that can be seen through like a window from the other side." For curator Jabari Owens-Bailey, who titled the exhibition he organized at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma "A Two-Way Mirror," the term is a reference to W.E.B. Du Bois's concept of "Double Consciousness," which refers to the Black experience in America. Specifically, it refers to the divided consciousness between how one sees oneself, and the simultaneous awareness of how one is being perceived by the world, something that develops from living in a racially divided American society. As Du Bois put it in his groundbreaking 1903 essay collection The Souls of Black Folk, it's "measuring oneself by the means of a nation that looked back in contempt."

Portrait photo of Marta Klonowska taken by Stephan Wieland

Thursday December 14, 2023 | by Jana Elsayed

CONVERSATION: Marta Klonowska, on childhood memories, discarded beauty, and her major exhibition at the Finnish Glass Museum

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, Museums

Once upon a time, a little girl in Poland picked up a piece of glass, placed it up against the sky, and marveled at how it altered the light hitting her eye. As children do, Marta Klonowska then dug a small hole in the ground and filled it with leaves and pieces of a drawing she had torn up. Covering her creation with the piece of glass, she knelt down and looked down at her artwork transformed by the shadows and unusual cast of light. This childhood game wasn't forgotten many years later, when Klonowska was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Poland, and came across shards of broken glass in her studio. Though she was studying ceramics and sculpture, something about the glass rekindled her interest, and she began creating sculptural assemblages of glass shards to create figurative objects imbued with the beauty and symbolic power of a shattered material.Klonowska's aesthetic approach of finding beauty in discarded items rescued and remade may hearken back to her childhood years, but there's something very grown-up about the way she takes what others may overlook, or dismiss as garbage, to not only use but to create beautiful things. At the Finnish Glass Museum, where Klonowska's latest exhibition "Movements" is currently on view, creatures are brought from the obscure corners of paintings and take center stage in three dimensions, bristling with the alluring sparkling edges of the shards from which they were constructed.

Thursday December 7, 2023 | by Jahlil Rush

Chihuly's first botanical garden installation in Australia set to open in 2024

Artists have exhibited their artwork in botanical gardens since at least the late 19th century, when botanical illustrations were shown at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, and it was at these London, England, gardens where Auguste Rodin's sculptures were first exhibited in the United Kingdom in 1902. Almost exactly a century later, Dale Chihuly unveiled his "Garden Cycle" installation at Chicago's Garfield Park Conservatory, which became an immediate sensation, more than tripling attendance in its run from 2001 to 2002.

Glass: The UrbanGlass Quarterly, a glossy art magazine published four times a year by UrbanGlass has provided a critical context to the most important artwork being done in the medium of glass for more than 40 years.