Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York

     Corning, New York lies just north of the Pennsylvania border.  We had one cool, windy day so we decided to do an inside activity.  Seeing the Corning Museum of Glass fit the bill.  The museum has a good balance of displays and live demonstrations that appeal to both children and adults.  Admission is free for children under age 17, $15.30 for college students and military members, and $18.00 for adults.  The admission fee allows entry for two consecutive days.  If you do everything the museum has to offer, including making your own piece of glass, you'll need both days.

A column of glass tendrils greets visitors at the entry.  At first I said, "Wow!'  After seeing the treasures inside, I said, "Meh."

This tower is made from 680 casserole dishes.  We have one of the white ones.
The display is part of  the story of glass ceramics.  Donald Stookey accidentally discovered glass ceramics when he left some samples in an oven overnight.  The samples overheated, but instead of melting into a puddle, they remained solid.  When Stookey dropped one of the samples, it bounced.  You can thank Mr. Stookey for freezer-to oven-to table casserole dishes, ceramic cooktops, and telescope mirrors.

This is a cross section of a bundle of copper cable that is six feet in diameter.  One fiber optic strand, just a bit thicker than a human hair, can transmit as much information as this huge copper mass.  Verizon FIOS is a revolution of sorts.   

There is a 750 seat theater.  We watched a glass artist make a pitcher.  The museum provided a Mandarin translator for this demonstration because there was a group of Chinese tourists in attendance.

The process of making the pitcher involved dipping into molten glass, rolling the molten glass in colored glass to achieve a design, shaping with various methods and tools, and leaving the finished pitcher in an oven to cool slowly over night - a process called annealing.  The pieces of glass art along the front of the stage were made the day before.  Two lucky winners in our audience won one of these objets d'art. 

There is a camera inside the oven and a camera at the work station that projects what the artist is doing on wide screen TV's.

One area of the museum is dedicated to modern glass art.  I loved many of these pieces.  Here are some of my favorites.
This is called Fog by Ann Gardner.

I looked at this and imagined water droplets in various shades of gray.  I saw a curtain of fog.  Mike saw a really big mobile.

To Die Upon a Kiss by Fred Wilson
This chandelier's name was inspired by Othello's dying words.  The coloration symbolizes the life force draining away.  The English major in me loved it. 

Continuous Mile by Liza Lou
This is a one mile long cotton and glass bead rope that is coiled and stacked.  Ms. Lou and a team of  South African bead workers spent two years completely the project.

Here's a close up.  Sure looks like kumihimo to me!

Evening Dress with Shaw by Karen La Monte
It is breathtaking to see a substance as heavy as glass seem to float.

Melancholia by Narcissus Quagliata
This is a piece in the Ben W. Heineman, Sr. Family Collection of Contemporary Glass.  The artist is an Italian immigrant.  He depicts a man on an airplane leaving loved ones behind.  I looked at this, and all I saw was Eric Estrada.