Glass Pavilion
Toledo Museum of Art

The Toledo Museum of Art and its new Glass Pavilion, opened in 2006, are located in northwest Ohio. By the late nineteenth century, this area was home to over one hundred glass companies, attracted by the newly discovered gas fields, which lasted less than five years; these provided cheap fuel for the glass furnaces. Even though many glass manufacturers left the area to seek inexpensive fuel elsewhere, Edward Drummond Libbey brought New England Glass—the foremost American maker of glass products—to Toledo. Libbey became the founder and benefactor of the Toledo Museum of Art and its superb glass collection. But the strength of the glass collection was more than just material. From 1986 to 1992, their guest curator of Roman glass was E. Marianne Stern, both an archaeologist and ancient glass expert, who was also open to working with contemporary glass artists. Her numerous publications on ancient glass have set a high standard.

With this background, and their past commitment to glass research and study (Ornament 28(4), 2005), any student of glass would hope that this new, one story building, itself built of glass, would be a showcase for objects made of this wonderful synthetic material. Ornament visited the Glass Pavilion twice for this review; about a month after it opened, and again nine months later, so that the new facility would have time to settle in and the staff correct any possible problems.

While art critics raved about the new glass museum, those who look realistically at how this transparent structure functions, especially during the Midwest summer, may have a different opinion. Of the galleries we reviewed, only Gallery One (ancient glass) and Gallery Five (contemporary glass) used direct lighting from the glass walls for illumination; the first gallery had the most glass ornaments, except for the Glass Study Room. All of these early glass pendants or beads, some dating to the late seventh century B.C., were of opaque glass, so none benefited from the backlighting provided by the brilliant natural light of a June day. In Gallery Five, which contained mostly contemporary glass objects, except the ancient Astarte pendant, this same glaring light outside, reflecting off the courtyard, made it difficult to view the objects on display. Perhaps this is why most of the other galleries have curtains or translucent frosted glass walls. While this may have solved the problem of the glare, these measures left little light for viewing and almost none of the transparent glass objects were transilluminated. Patrick Benesh-Liu, who reviewed the Pavilion with me, noted that “the very nature of glass is to make use of light.”

The Glass Study Room, largest of all the exhibition spaces, shows ancient to contemporary glass objects, presumably in chronological order; displayed in all glass cases with almost no labels, although by this year, there were signs that read “Installation in Progress.” Since we had previously reviewed the old study room, which also contained many glass ornaments, this enlarged space drew our attention. Five-layered chevron beads were still placed in between ancient core-formed Egyptian glass vessels, at least two dating to the eighteenth dynasty and Roman-Egypt mosaics; a Warring States glass bead of the Zhou dynasty was put with Edo period Japanese glass beads or ojime, while two shelves below held additional Zhou glass beads. In between these shelves, there was a Han glass erhtang and possibly Tang molded ornaments. It is very difficult to think why cultures and chronology were scrambled in such a confusing manner; was this due to installation errors or curatorial ignorance?

While the Toledo Museum of Art’s glass collection and its other holdings are world class, neither glass ornaments nor representative cultures are shown in proportion to glass vessels of the Middle East, Europe or North America. Because so many glass objects were small, like beads or pendants, omission of this artifact category leaves out many fascinating aspects of glass history, technology and aesthetics. In addition, the museum visitor is left with the impression that glass was not present in Asia, where it was late in arrival but very helpful in our understanding of the technology and trade of glass worldwide.

The Art of Glass, a two hundred forty-eight page catalog, is available from the Museum Shop, which also has a wonderful selection of glass art objects for purchase. For more information visit the Toledo Museum of Art website http://www.toledomuseum.org/.