Corning Museum of Glass
— — the room where light is a material.
Not only on a wall.
“The Corning Museum of Glass holds the largest collection of glass in the world, more than 50,000 objects spanning thirty-five centuries, from Roman cameo vessels to a 200-inch Pyrex disc cast for the Mount Palomar telescope. The museum was founded in 1951 by Corning Glass Works on the company's hundredth anniversary, in the small Finger Lakes town that has been making glass since the 1860s. The 2015 Contemporary Art and Design Wing, designed by Thomas Phifer, added 100,000 square feet of white-walled gallery and the largest space in the world built for the display of contemporary glass. Live hot-shop demonstrations run all day in the adjacent amphitheatre. from the studio
Corning Museum of Glass, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Corning Museum of Glass sits on the north bank of the Chemung River in Corning, New York, a town of about 10,000 in the southern Finger Lakes. The museum opened in 1951 as a gift from Corning Glass Works (now Corning Incorporated) on the company's centennial. Its collection of more than 50,000 glass objects spans thirty-five centuries. The campus has grown through additions by Gunnar Birkerts in 1980 and Smith-Miller + Hawkinson in 2001, culminating in the 2015 Contemporary Art and Design Wing by Thomas Phifer, a 100,000-square-foot expansion that includes a 26,000-square-foot column-free contemporary gallery, the largest in the world devoted to contemporary glass.
The Contemporary Wing is designed to flood the galleries with diffused north light. Phifer's roof of more than 500 GFRC fins acts as a giant light filter, giving the white interiors a flat, even light that suits the colour and refraction of glass. The earlier Ben W. Heineman Sr. Family Gallery, by Smith-Miller + Hawkinson, holds the modern collection in a top-lit volume. The 200-inch Mount Palomar disc, cast in Pyrex by Corning in 1934, sits in its own gallery, and the hot-shop amphitheatre runs live glassblowing demonstrations to a working audience all day.
The Corning Museum of Glass is open daily year-round, generally 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended summer hours. Admission, valid for two consecutive days, includes the galleries, the hot-shop demonstrations, the Innovation Center, and the Rakow Research Library. The Make Your Own Glass studios charge separately and require reservations. Corning sits at the intersection of Interstate 86 and State Route 414, about an hour west of Elmira and an hour south of Watkins Glen on Seneca Lake. The Gaffer District along Market Street, a five-minute walk from the museum, holds independent glass studios and the Rockwell Museum of Western American Art.