The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet

Dale Chihuly, Untitled (Toledo), 1993. Acrylic paint on paper. Gift of Rita Barbour Kern, 2009 © 1993 Dale Chihuly

One hundred miles north, The Flint Institute of Arts in Flint, Michigan, has 39 Chihuly works from his “Seaforms” series on display through September 8. One-hundred-fifty miles to the south, The Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus, Ohio, has a Chihuly exhibition that will remain up through May 2010 (visitors also can access the garden’s John F. Wolfe Chihuly Resource Center for further study of the best-known artist working with glass). With plenty of opportunities to see one of the world’s most widely exhibited artists only a short drive away (by Midwest standards), and countless other Chihuly displays around the globe (just see the official Chihuly exhibition schedule) why does the Toledo Museum of Art plan to open its own Chihuly exhibition on September 17?

“Our museum has had a long tradition of working with Dale from his very beginnings of his career,” says Jutta-Annette Page, the Toledo Museum of Arts curator of glass (and acting curator of decorative arts) in a telephone interview with GLASS. She points out that in 1970, the museum first invited Chihuly to exhibit some of his work with Jamie Carpenter in its first Glass National exhibition invitational (the two first Glass National exhibitions were not juried). He returned in 1972 to blow glass in the museum’s studio.

Chihuly in a news photo during a 1972 visit to the TMA Glass Studio. photo courtesy of the toledo blade.

Thanks to wise buying over the years, as well as generous gifts, the Toledo Museum has one of the largest collections of Chihuly (36 works in addition to drawings and studies) anywhere. This offers the rare opportunity to put on an exhibition without consultation with Chihuly Studios which is typically closely involved in many aspects of museum and botanical garden exhibitions.

So Page was free to explore new ways of displaying the work when organizing the exhibition “Chihuly Toledo!” which will use mounds of recycled plastic pellets on platforms to secure the works, gather additional light, and provide a subtle barrier that allows the public to walk around the “Indian Blanket” pieces, stacked “Seaforms,” “Macchias” and “Persians,” floral “Venetians,” one of the “Prussian Blue and Oxblood Persian Pairs,” and a set of “Niijima Floats,” some of the largest glass pieces ever blown by hand that were purchased on behalf of the museum by the TMA’s Apollo Society in 1993.

Dale Chihuly, Gold Over Turquoise Blue Venetian #528, 1990. Colorless and colored glass; blown, applied, and tooled. Gift of the Apollo Society and the artist, 1991.21 © 1991 Dale Chihuly

“People like to gloss over Chihuly’s important role in the Studio Glass movement,” says Page. “I hope that they will understand that he has had a very long career and that the pieces that he’s made have played quite a considerable role in the history of glass sculpture.”

In her installation of the Chihuly works in the museum’s Glass Pavilion, Page did not organize the exhibition chronologically. For Chihuly, whose work dazzles with color, form, and flourish, she saw no need to orchestrate the viewer’s experience.

“You really don’t need to know anything about art to love these pieces,” says Page, when asked for her thoughts about Chihuly’s universal appeal that has drawn record attendance at museums such as the De Young in San Francisco. “They are colorful, and extraordinarily big. Many people haven’t seen glass this big.”

Visitors to the Glass Pavillion will already be familiar with large-scale glass in the form of Karen LaMonte dresses or even in the permanent Chihuly installation, the Campiello del Remer chandelier that was cut at Waterford Crystal and installed as part of the Glass Pavillion opening in 2006.

Says Page: “Chihuly’s work speaks for itself.  It’s vibrant, alive with color, light, depth, and perspective,”

Chihuly Toledo! opens on September 17 and runs through November 29, 2009. Admission to the Toledo Museum is free. For more info, see the exhibition website or call 800-644-6862.