The
Corning Museum of Glass, in
Corning, New YorkCorning is a city in Steuben County, New York, United States, on the Chemung River. The population was 10,842 at the 2000 census. It is named for Erastus Corning, an Albany, New York financier and railroad executive who was an investor in the company that developed the community.- Overview :The...
, explores every facet of
glassIn general Glass refers to a solid, brittle, transparent material, commonly used for windows, bottles, or eyewear. Examples of glassy materials include, but are not limited to, soda-lime glass, borosilicate glass, acrylic glass, sugar glass, Muscovy-glass, or aluminium oxynitride. The term glass...
: its unique place in art, history, culture, science and technology, craft, and design.
The Museum is home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of glass--more than 45,000 glass objects, spanning 3,500 years of glassmaking history. Visitors can also explore the science and technology of glass in a hands-on exhibit area, see live narrated glassmaking demonstrations and try their hand at glassworking in short daily workshops.
Located in the
Finger LakesThe Finger Lakes are a chain of lakes in the west-central section of Upstate New York that are a popular tourist destination. The lakes mainly are linear in shape, each lake oriented on a north-south axis. The two longest, Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake, are among the deepest in America. Both are...
region, in one of the most prominent glassmaking towns in America, the Museum is an educational institution, dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of the art, history and science of glass.
The Glass Collection Galleries explore Near Eastern, Asian, European, and American
glassIn general Glass refers to a solid, brittle, transparent material, commonly used for windows, bottles, or eyewear. Examples of glassy materials include, but are not limited to, soda-lime glass, borosilicate glass, acrylic glass, sugar glass, Muscovy-glass, or aluminium oxynitride. The term glass...
and glassmaking from antiquity through present day.
The
Corning Museum of Glass, in
Corning, New YorkCorning is a city in Steuben County, New York, United States, on the Chemung River. The population was 10,842 at the 2000 census. It is named for Erastus Corning, an Albany, New York financier and railroad executive who was an investor in the company that developed the community.- Overview :The...
, explores every facet of
glassIn general Glass refers to a solid, brittle, transparent material, commonly used for windows, bottles, or eyewear. Examples of glassy materials include, but are not limited to, soda-lime glass, borosilicate glass, acrylic glass, sugar glass, Muscovy-glass, or aluminium oxynitride. The term glass...
: its unique place in art, history, culture, science and technology, craft, and design.
The Museum is home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of glass--more than 45,000 glass objects, spanning 3,500 years of glassmaking history. Visitors can also explore the science and technology of glass in a hands-on exhibit area, see live narrated glassmaking demonstrations and try their hand at glassworking in short daily workshops.
Located in the
Finger LakesThe Finger Lakes are a chain of lakes in the west-central section of Upstate New York that are a popular tourist destination. The lakes mainly are linear in shape, each lake oriented on a north-south axis. The two longest, Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake, are among the deepest in America. Both are...
region, in one of the most prominent glassmaking towns in America, the Museum is an educational institution, dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of the art, history and science of glass.
The Glass Collection
The Glass Collection Galleries explore Near Eastern, Asian, European, and American
glassIn general Glass refers to a solid, brittle, transparent material, commonly used for windows, bottles, or eyewear. Examples of glassy materials include, but are not limited to, soda-lime glass, borosilicate glass, acrylic glass, sugar glass, Muscovy-glass, or aluminium oxynitride. The term glass...
and glassmaking from antiquity through present day. They tell the story of glass creation, from a full-scale model of an Egyptian furnace to the grand factories of
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
, and, then
AmericaThe Americas, or America, are lands in the Western hemisphere or New World, comprising the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. America may be ambiguous in English, as it is more commonly used to refer to the United States of America...
, and finally, to the small-scale furnaces that fueled the Studio Glass movement that began in America in the 1960s.
The galleries contain objects representing every country and historical period in which glassmaking has been practiced.
The Rakow Research Library
The Juliette K. and Leonard S. Rakow Research Library of The Corning Museum of Glass is the world’s foremost library on the art and history of glass and glassmaking. Its mission is to acquire everything published on the subject of glass, in every format and in every language.
The library’s collection of more than 300,000 items includes publications in more than 40 languages, and half of its books and periodicals are in languages other than English. These holdings range in date from a 12th-century manuscript to the latest biographies of contemporary glass artists. The library’s holdings also include personal and corporate archives and manuscripts, as well as sound recordings, postage stamps, calendars, and other glass-related resources.
The Studio
The Studio of The Corning Museum of Glass is an internationally renowned teaching facility that also offers various residency and scholarship programs.
Instructors from the United States and abroad teach at The Studio. Students at The Studio range in experience from beginning to advanced. Classes at The Studio are held throughout the year.
The Studio also offers half-hour Make Your Own Glass workshops for Museum visitors, as well as group glassmaking experiences. Both include activities appropriate for children as young as three-years-old.
The Museum's History
Conceived of as an accredited educational institution and founded in 1950 by the Corning Glass Works (now Corning Incorporated), the Museum has never been a showcase for the company or its products, but rather exists as a non-profit institution that preserves and expands the world's understanding of glass.
When the Museum officially opened to the public in 1951, it contained a significant collection of glass and glass-related books and documents: there were 2,000 objects, two staff members, and a research library, housed in a low, glass-walled building designed by
HarrisonWallace Kirkman Harrison , was an American twentieth-century architect.Harrison started his professional career with the firm of Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, participating in the construction of Rockefeller Center...
&
AbramovitzMax Abramovitz was an architect of the New York City firm Harrison, Abramovitz, & Abbe. His most prominent works include the United Nations Headquarters building, New York; Avery Fisher Hall , New York; the Corning Glass Center, Corning, New York; the U.S...
.
Under its first director, Thomas Buechner, the Museum continued to assemble a comprehensive collection of glass, and its library acquired rare books related to the history of glassmaking. When Buechner accepted the directorship of the
Brooklyn MuseumThe Brooklyn Museum, located at 200 Eastern Parkway, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, is the second-largest art museum in New York City, and one of the largest in the United States. Arnold L...
, he was succeeded by Paul Perrot, who continued the expansion of the collection and the staff.
Museum Underwater
In June 1972, disaster struck as
Hurricane AgnesHurricane Agnes was the first tropical storm and first hurricane of the 1972 Atlantic hurricane season. A rare June hurricane, it made landfall on the Florida Panhandle before moving northeastward and ravaging the Mid-Atlantic region as a tropical storm...
emptied a week's worth of rain into the surrounding Chemung River Valley. On June 23rd, the Chemung River overflowed its banks and poured five feet four inches of floodwater into the Museum. When the waters receded, staff members found glass objects tumbled in their cases and crusted with mud, the library's books swollen with water. According to Martin and Edwards, 528 of the museum's 13,000 objects had sustained damage (1977, 11) At the time, Buechner described the flood as "possibly the greatest single catastrophe borne by an American museum."
Museum staff members, under the directorship of
Robert H. Brill-Introduction:Dr Robert Brill is a luminary in the field of archaeological science, best known for his work on the chemical analysis of ancient glass. Born in the United States of America in 1929, Brill attended West Side High School in Newark, New Jersey, before going on to study for his B.S...
were faced with the tremendous task of restoration: every glass object had to be meticulously cleaned and restored, while the library's contents had to be cleaned and dried page by page, slide by slide, even before being assessed for rebinding, restoration, or replacement. On August 1, 1972, the Museum reopened with restoration work still underway.
Growth and Renovations
By 1978, the Museum had outgrown its space.
Gunnar BirkertsGunnar Birkerts is a prominent American architect, who, for most of his career, was based in southeastern Michigan. Some of his designs include the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, Marquette Plaza in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City,...
designed a new addition, creating a flowing series of galleries with the library at their core, linked to the old building via light-filled, windowed ramps. With memories of the hurricane still fresh, the new galleries were raised high above the flood line on concrete pillars. The new Museum opened to the public on May 28, 1980, exactly 29 years after its first opening.
By the early 1990s, The Corning Museum of Glass was once more overflowing its exhibition space, and increasing visitation put a strain on guest facilities. In 1996, the Museum embarked upon the first phase of a planned five-year, $65 million transformation. Under the directorship of Dr. David Whitehouse, the first element to be added was The Studio. This state-of-the-art teaching facility for glassblowing and coldworking opened for classes in 1996.
Architects Smith-Miller + Hawkinson designed an addition to the main Museum building, using glass wherever possible to convey the beauty and elegance of the art form in the building itself. The Museum's renovation was completed in 2001, and included a new visitors' center, Sculpture Gallery, Hot Glass Show demonstration stage and a hands-on Innovation Center with exhibitions designed by
Ralph Appelbaum AssociatesWidely acknowledged as the world's largest and preeminent museum exhibition design firm, Ralph Appelbaum Associates has offices in New York City, London and Beijing...
. A redesigned GlassMarket, one of the largest Museum shops in the country, filled the entire bottom of the Museum. The Rakow Library was relocated to new quarters across the Museum campus.
The renovated facilities now welcome more than 300,000 visitors from around the globe each year and the Museum actively acquires new objects.
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