Mining Glass

June 16, 2007 – February 3, 2008
Organized by the Museum of Glass

In celebration of our Fifth Anniversary, the Museum of Glass is pleased to present Mining Glass, a new exhibition that explores how the medium of glass has gained prominence in 21st century contemporary art.

Featuring the installation and sculptural works of Wim Delvoye, Teresita Fernández, Mona Hatoum, Maya Lin, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Kiki Smith, Fred Wilson, and the late Chen Zhen, Mining Glass is the first major survey to examine how the rich and unparalleled material of glass has expanded beyond its traditional application in decorative and functional art in the early twenty-first century.

The installations are organized around eight narratives that act as suggested passages to help viewers see beyond the technical matters associated with the medium. By moving through the themes of artifice, boundaries, desire, enchantment, excess, identity, intersections, and landscape, the exhibition concentrates on the deeper issues that concern artists, allowing the meaning of the work to take precedence over the technique of how it has been executed. The featured artists, none of whom are glass artists, thus present a stunning diversity of approaches to the material to reveal the multiplicity of glass—precious, magical, and mystical, yet common, practical, and functional—while challenging the notion that work in glass is merely pretty.

Glass may have been disregarded by twentieth century art as decorative, but today it is not simply a major medium in its own right, it is also one that opens new visions for the artists who are approaching and mining it.

In conjunction with the exhibition, two new installations were conceived by Maya Lin and Jean-Michel Othoniel, and fabricated during the artists’ Visiting Artist residencies in 2006 and 2007 with the assistance of the Museum of Glass’s Hot Shop team. Also in conjunction with the exhibition, Fred Wilson will be an artist-in-residence in August 2007.

Mining Glass is accompanied by a color catalogue with an essay by curator Juli Cho Bailer.