The Museum of Glass Gets Serious about Collecting

At Tacoma, Washington's "The Museum of Glass" there has been something happening for the last year that we at Nourot think is a great idea: adding works by the contemporary glass masters in America.

Director Tim Close of The Museum of Glass is one year into an ambitious 10-year plan to build up it's fledgling collection, focused on modern glass.

Why is built into the museum’s very mission statement says director Close: to tell the story of glass. This, of course, is what MOG has been doing for its first five years without a collection: hosting Hot Shop artists, mounting traveling shows and occasionally commissioning works. But the museum intends to dig deep into the story of 20th- and 21st-century glass art, and to do that, says Close, it needs a permanent collection.

“Collecting is the DNA of a museum,” Close said. “You come to museums for wonderment, enlightenment.”

While the nearby Tacoma Art Museum will limit it's acquisitions to art that focuses on the Northwest, the Museum of Glass in Tacoma will probably try and cast a wider net to include many of the "end of the century" pioneers of the art glass movement.

It’s an interesting statement that implies that, whatever MOG has been doing until this point, it’s only going to fully achieve museum hood with a collection says the Olympian in a recent article. It's a given that most significant art museums in this country have some sort of permanent collection. In fact, that’s how some museums begin, as a venue to house a big private collection.

The Museum of Glass has held off until now to build its collection, citing changes of direction (from contemporary art to pure glass) and management. In fact, it’s starting early: The Tacoma Art Museum didn’t begin collecting until 1963. That was 30-odd years after it began operations.

Most succinctly, the simple fact is that art costs, and building a museum-standard collection takes either committed donors or a lot of money.

“Eighty percent of museum acquisitions come from donors,” Close said. Stephanie Stebich, Tacoma Art Museum's director agrees with him. Private collectors decide to give to museums, either donating or gifting a work, for many reasons: taxes, prestige, passion for art, civic-mindedness. Both TAM and MOG are currently exhibiting shows taken from their collections; in each, the majority of works display the name of a donor.

Which is why we exhort those of you who have collected important works by the glass pioneers of the last 45 years to donate them while there is a chance they will be preserved and shown in a setting that will leave a legacy for you and your family.

This idea may have merit at MOG, however, TAM’s board has decided to move from being the “passive recipient of the community’s collective generosity to an active leadership role.” In other words, it’s going to decide what it wants to collect.
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For more information of MOG policies please start by calling Mr. Tim Close, Director at 1-866-4MUSEUM.

Preston Singletary Show Tacoma

Preston Singletary, Seattle-based glass artist embodies symbol, design and spirit in his recently opened exhibition called “Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire and Shadows” at the Tacoma Museum of Glass.
Organizers have compiled work from only the last 15 years of Singletary's career in glass – the years after he made the decision to "find a Tlingit voice in that medium."
Tlingit is a Northwestern American Indian Tribe and the theme of the works in glass embody the motifs of this northern "rainforest" tribe's characteristic reliefs from their famous totem poles and woven blankets.

“Echoes” is the name of the exhibit. According to The News Tribune, "the work reverberates with tribal intensity", although from the pictures it seems the glass works themselves are smooth and industrial looking. They refer in spirit to the carved and painted wood of the Tlingit tribe.

The review of the show, Rosemary Ponnekanti, of The News Tribune says: "Singletary’s ability to merge the aesthetics of different media shows in his 2008 “Eagle” and “Raven” dance staffs, among a dozen works created specifically for this show." The glass works are nearly six feet high. The glass is opaque and looks like wood, "while offering stark textural contrast to the human hair locks curling down their spines."

Unfortunately, says Ms Ponnekanti, there’s also an annoying DVD projection (not by Singletary) of Alaskan wilderness overlaid with cheesy “spirit” silhouettes and feel-good New Age soundtrack.

We say this is predictable for museum shows. Wonder what Preston thinks of this?
Cool work, Preston. With shades of Fine Craft Art. Keep it up. Looking for more inspiration? How about a series on the current tribe of Northwest Urban natives? A Latte blanket?

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum is producing a documentary film along with various interviews filmed with Singletary in Alaska. A fully illustrated color catalog featuring essays by Native American scholar Steven C. Brown, Tlingit storyteller and author Walter Porter, and Museum of Glass curator Melissa G. Post accompanies the exhibition.

“Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire and Shadows”
Where: Museum of Glass, 1801 Dock St., Tacoma
10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. third Thursdays, noon-5 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 19
Admission: $12 general, $10 seniors, students and military, $10 per person for groups of 10 adults or more, $5 ages 6-12, $36 family, free for members and children younger than 5 Information: 1-866-4-MUSEUM, www.museumofglass.org