Corning Museum of Glass
Encyclopedia
The Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning, New York
Corning (city), New York
Corning 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 financier and railroad executive who was an investor in the company that developed the community.- Overview :The city of...

, explores every facet of glass
Glass
Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...

, including 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 Lakes
Finger Lakes
The Finger Lakes are a pattern of lakes in the west-central section of Upstate New York in the United States. They are a popular tourist destination. The lakes are long and thin , each oriented roughly on a north-south axis. The two longest, Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake, are among the deepest in...

 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 Museum's Glass Collection Galleries contain objects representing every country and historical period in which glassmaking has been practiced, 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 Europe
Europe
Europe 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 watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and America
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

 and finally, to the small-scale furnaces that fueled the Studio Glass movement that began in America in the 1960s. The Museum's extensive collection of contemporary artworks includes pieces by significant artists such as Karen LaMonte
Karen LaMonte
Karen LaMonte is an American artist known for her life-size sculptures in ceramic, bronze and cast glass as well as her large scale monotype prints.-Background:...

 , Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor and entrepreneur.-Biography:Chihuly graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington. He enrolled at the College of the Puget Sound in 1959...

, Libenský / Brychtová and Josiah McElheny
Josiah McElheny
Josiah McElheny is an artist and sculptor, primarily known for his work with glass blowing and assemblages of glass and mirrored glassed objects . He is a 2006 recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program "genius grant"...

.

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 400,000 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 offering a variety of classes and workshops for new and experienced glassworkers and artists.

The Studio’s Artist-in-Residence program brings artists from around the world to Corning. The artists spend a month at The Studio, exploring new directions in glass art, or expanding on their current bodies of work. At the end of the residency, each artist gives a presentation about his or her work. This is a free event held in The Studio Lecture Room and open to the public.

Classes are held throughout the year and are taught by experienced instructors, both American and international. Methods taught include glassblowing, flameworking, kiln casting, hot sculpting, engraving, cold working, fusing, gilding, sandblasting and more. Students of The Studio benefit from using the immense resources of the world’s leading glass museum, and the Rakow Research Library.

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 Harrison & Abramovitz
Harrison & Abramovitz
Harrison & Abramovitz was an American architectural firm based in New York and active from 1941 through 1976, a partnership of Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz....

.

Thomas S. Buechner
Thomas S. Buechner
Thomas Scharman Buechner was an aspiring artist who turned to working at museums, who became the founding director of the Corning Museum of Glass and director of the Brooklyn Museum, where he oversaw a major transformation in its operation and displays....

, who would later become director of the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....

, was the founding director of the glass museum, serving in the post from 1951 to 1960 and again from 1973 to 1980. Under Buechner's leadership, 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 Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....

, 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 Agnes
Hurricane Agnes
Hurricane 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
Robert H. Brill
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. degree at Upsala...

 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 Birkerts
Gunnar Birkerts
Gunnar Birkerts is a prominent American architect who, for most of his career, was based in the metropolitan area of Detroit, 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...

 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 Associates
Ralph Appelbaum
Ralph Appelbaum Associates is the world's largest museum exhibition design firm. It has offices in New York City, London and Beijing.- Overview :...

. A redesigned 18000 square feet (1,672.3 m²) 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 is active in its acquisition of new objects.

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