Issue No. 35 / Winter 2020 2 Issue No. 35 / Winter 2020 Contents Dear Members, 3 President’s Letter 4 Specialty Glass Residency We think quite a bit about our impact 6 In Sparkling Company at The Corning Museum of Glass, as 10 Blown Away Residency we welcome nearly 450,000 people 12 Museum News from all over the world each year 13 My Favorite Thing and share our world-class collections 14 Rakow Commission with new and growing communities. 16 CMoG Goes Global 18 Objects in Focus Loans of our objects and exhibitions are 21 Donor Profile increasingly visible at institutions across 22 Explainers Program the United States and internationally. 24 Member Moments Our residencies and commissions help 26 Ennion Listing artists and scholars to find their voice, develop their practice, and expand Writing and Editing their own impact. Our youth programs Ann Campbell cultivate the next generation’s appreciation of arts and curatorial Ellen Corradini practices. And of course, the Museum was front and center this year as Mickey Dann Carole Ann Fabian glassmaking went global with Netflix’sBlown Away competition series. Jon Heath Kacey Scheib Throughout 2019, we celebrated the Museum’s pivotal role in Kimberly Thompson shaping the field of contemporary glass over the past 60 years, with Art Director the exhibition New Glass Now—an award-winning exhibition in the Stephanie Carr Contemporary Art + Design Galleries. Don’t miss the opportunity to see the show before it closes on January 5. Photography Mickey Dann Jeffrey Foote As we usher in a new decade, we’re making plans for our next major Amanda Sterling exhibition, In Sparkling Company: Glass and Social Life in Britain During Christopher Walters the 1700s, which explores the exuberant social life of the 1700s through Matt Wittmeyer Additional imagery by Museum a lens of glass. We’ll also celebrate milestones including 20 years of our ® Photography Department or as noted. popular 2300° series, and 50 years of optical fiber and Corelle , both invented right here in the Corning valley. Copyright © 2019 The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY On behalf of the staff at The Corning Museum of Glass, thank you for your continued support as we inspire people far and wide to see glass IssueIssue No. No. 34 35 / Winter/ Winter 2020 2020 in a new light. Karol B. Wight, Ph.D. President and Executive Director Gather magazine is published two times annually for Members of Making an Impact, a new video created by the Museum’s Digital Media department, features the The Corning Museum of Glass. many ways The Corning Museum of Glass impacts our communities. Watch at cmog.org/about. Cover photo by David Leyes, courtesy of marblemedia. 3 “The material constantly reminds you that you’re fallible, human, and limited. Within those descriptions, there’s a lot of room for freedom and discovery.” 4 A Conversation with Next Specialty Glass Resident Beth Lipman Beth Lipman has been selected as the Specialty Glass Q. What inspires your work today? Artist-in-Residence for 2020, awarded by the Museum and Corning Incorporated. Beth is the seventh artist to A. I use ancient flora imagery to conjure Paleo time be given special access to Corning’s patented materials and create landscapes juxtaposed with relatively through a highly selective residency designed to inspire contemporary objects that were made by humans. and inform not only the artist and their practice, but I also enjoy creating work responsive to people, also the research scientists and engineers at Corning to institutions, and places. consider specialty glasses in new ways. Q. You employ experimentation and themes of desire Q. How have The Corning Museum of Glass and and “flawed” parts of the process in your completed The Studio been significant to you through the years? works. How do you see that evolving at Corning? A. My relationship with the Museum and The Studio A. I am usually drawn to failure. Sometimes failure has evolved over my adult life. When I started working finds me. I look for these areas of inconsistency or with glass as a student, I remember thinking Corning discordant moments because I feel like there’s a lot was totally off the charts in terms of the scope of the of information there. I have participated in many permanent collection and the resources in the Rakow residencies at KOHLER where they have signs internally Research Library. I discover new things and become that say, “variability is the enemy of quality.” Artists reinvigorated each time I visit, and I try to find any are the variable—that’s what we do as artists. We offer possible excuse to get back there often. something new that was unknown before. Q. You work a lot in the still-life tradition. What about Q. What has glass taught you about being an artist? it first captivated you? A. Humility, perseverance, and fearlessness. This A. The still life was something I grew up with, as my material will match you wherever your boundary lies. mother was a folk painter and we went to museums The material constantly reminds you that you’re fallible, often. The still-life tradition continues to unfold like human, and limited. Within those descriptions, there’s a an onion with many, many layers. I use it as a way lot of room for freedom and discovery. For me, working to investigate the age of the Anthropocene [the with glass has always been a process of relinquishing my time in which humans have significant impact on need to control. I’m constantly reminded that I’m not Earth’s environment]. I use still life to think about perfect, so it pushes me back to this metaphor of life, material culture—how every object is a milestone understanding what has happened rather than what I of being human. might want to happen. Left: Beth Lipman will be The Corning Museum of Glass and Corning Incorporated Specialty Glass Resident for 2020. 5 6 All that Glittered in British Social Life in the 1700s In Sparkling Company: Glass and Social Life in Britain During the 1700s will open May 9, 2020, in the Changing Exhibitions Gallery. From glittering costumes and elaborately presented confectionery, to polished mirrors and dazzling chandeliers, glass helped define the social rituals and cultural values of the period. While it delighted the British elite, glass also bore witness to the horrors of slavery. Glass beads were traded for human lives and elegant glass dishes, baskets, and bowls held sweet delicacies made with sugar produced by enslaved labor. “In 18th-century Britain, developments in glass formulas and manufacturing techniques resulted in new and better types of glass, from windowpanes and mirrors to heavy, clear ‘crystal’ tableware, perfectly suited to the tastes and needs of Britain’s growing urban elite whose wealth derived from new enterprises in finance, manufacture, international trade and colonial expansion,” said Christopher L. Maxwell, curator of early modern glass, who is organizing the exhibition. “Glass is often overlooked in discussions of 18th-century decorative arts and material culture. In Sparkling Company will delve into the many functions and meanings of the material within the context of the exuberant social life of the period,” Maxwell added. Left: Mirror in wood frame, mercury-tin amalgam mirror; carved, assembled, and gilded wood. Probably England, London (glass), and Scotland (frame), carving attributed to William Mathie (fl. 1739–about 1761), based on designs by Thomas Chippendale (1718–1779), about 1760; 2018.2.8. Right: Detail, Ornamental vases, one of four, gilded copper-green lead glass. England, probably decorated in the London workshop of James Giles (1718–1780), about 1765; 2003.2.4A, B; 54.2.4A, B. 7 Britain in the 1700s was a vibrant and commercial nation with growing cities that were hubs of industry, scientific advancement, trade, and finance. British merchants navigated the globe carrying a multitude of cargoes: consumable, material, and human. Underpinning Britain’s prosperity were aggressive foreign trade policies, colonization, and a far-reaching economy of enslavement, the profits of which funded the pleasures and innovations of the fashionable world. Through a lens of glass, this exhibition will show visitors what it meant to be ‘modern’ in the 1700s, and what it cost. The exhibition will include loans from: the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Sir John Soane’s Museum, London; the Museum of London; the Fashion Museum, Bath; Royal Museums Greenwich, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Penn State University Library; Cleveland Museum of Art; and The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. 8 Dazzling Spangled-glass Drawing Room to Come Alive Through Virtual Reality A unique and dynamic component of In Sparkling “This is the first time we’re offering Museum guests Company is a virtual reality reconstruction of the the chance to experience virtual reality,” said remarkable and innovative spangled-glass drawing Mandy Kritzeck, producer/project manager for the room completed in 1775 for Hugh Percy, 1st Duke Digital Media team, which has collaborated with of Northumberland (1714–1786), and designed by international developers and 3-D modelers to design Robert Adam (1728–1792), a leading architect and this unique historical VR experience. “Through this designer of the period. An original section of the virtual experience, guests can appreciate the full 360° room (which was dismantled in the 1870s), on loan reflectivity of the space and the magnificent scale of from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, will the room, while seeing Adam’s designs for the first be on view in North America for the first time as part time since the 18th century.” of the exhibition, along with Adam’s original colored design drawings for the interior, on loan from the Sir John Soane’s Museum, London.