Corning Museum of Glass Receives $1.5 Million Grant from New York State to Fund New International Motorcoach Entrance

The Corning Museum of Glass has received a $1.5 million grant from New York State to support the creation of a new international motorcoach entrance. The grant was announced by Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today at the 2013 Regional Economic Development Council Awards ceremony held in Albany.

The Museum will transform its current motorcoach entrance on the west side of the facility into an attractive 10,000-square-foot indoor/outdoor reception area for visitors who arrive via tour busses. The area will include new amenities and a dedicated entrance to the new glass demonstration space in the North Wing addition. Exterior signage, large-scale maps and regional wayfinding will orient visitors and encourage inter-regional travel throughout Upstate New York.

The new international motorcoach entrance will open in late 2014 as part of the Museum’s North Wing addition project which includes a new 26,000-square-foot contemporary art gallery building and one of the world’s largest facilities for glassblowing demonstrations and live glass design sessions.

“We look forward to providing this new welcome point for our hundreds of thousands of motorcoach visitors who come to the Museum each year from all over the world,” said Marie McKee, president of The Corning Museum of Glass. “We are grateful to Governor Cuomo and Empire State Development for supporting this project and, in doing so, recognizing the importance of the Museum’s international visitors to the Upstate tourism market.”

The Corning Museum of Glass is the most visited art museum in New York State, outside of Manhattan, and a major driver of the Upstate New York tourism economy. More than 40 percent of the over 400,000 annual visitors to the Museum arrive via motorcoach.  Motorcoach visitation has more than doubled in the past ten years, with international group visitation growing nine percent year-over-year for the last three years.