This exhibition will explore influences in glassmaking that resulted both from the cultural exchange between the East and West and from indigenous craft traditions and documents stylistic developments in Western Europe and East Asia during the early modern period.

The production of the 200-inch disk was a landmark achievement in telescope technology. This exhibit tells the story of this innovation, the role of Corning Glass Works in its manufacture, and the disk’s place in the history of scientific discovery.

Toots Zynsky’s distinctive filet de verre (glass thread) vessels enjoy a widespread popularity and deserved acclaim for their often extraordinary and always unique explorations in color. Defying categorization, her pieces inhabit a region all their own, interweaving the traditions of painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts. This exhibition will be drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection.

This exhibition will cover the artistic glassware produced by the Mt. Washington Glass Company of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and its successor, the Pairpoint Company, from the late 19th century’s gilded age to the Roaring Twenties.

This exhibition will feature vessels, sculptures, and vitreographs (prints made from glass plates) by one of the founders of the American Studio glass movement, Harvey K. Littleton. Objects will span the arc of Littleton’s career in glass from the 1960s to the 1990s. In 1962, Littleton and Dominick Labino introduced glass to studio artists at two experimental workshops at the Toledo Museum of Art, and this migration of glassblowing from the factory to the studio blossomed into what is called the American Studio glass movement. On the 50th anniversary of these workshops, this exhibition honors Littleton, born and raised in Corning, for his achievements in developing glass as a material for artistic expression, and it presents a range of his influential artworks drawn from the Museum’s collection and the artist’s personal collection.

In 1996, the Museum received the archives of Dominick Labino, a co-founder of the American Studio Glass movement. Labino’s legacy is documented in this collection of letters, drawings, photographs, patents, and other materials housed at the Rakow Research Library. This exhibit will explore Labino’s lasting influence on scientific and studio glass, including his experimentations with color, glass composition, and furnace construction, as well as his involvement in the seminal 1962 Toledo workshop, which launched a radical new direction in glass art.