The Education and Interpretation Department at The Corning Museum of Glass likes to experiment with different methods of evaluation. Often these evaluations require participation from our visitors and we learn a great deal from them in the process. It’s also fun to see how they interact with the artworks in the collection.
On Friday, February 14, 2020, we asked our visitors to celebrate Valentine’s Day by placing a heart-shaped post-it note next to their favorite object in the Museum. Our Guest Services team handed out paper hearts all day long, and after the last guest had gone home, members of the Education Department collected and counted the notes. We collected 208 hearts in total, finding them scattered throughout every gallery at the Museum. In some cases, guests even left cryptic messages on their hearts.
We started in the 35 Centuries of Glass Gallery.
There were two objects competing for the top spot in this part of the Museum: Window from Rochroane Castle, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York made by Tiffany Studios, and Ghost Walk under Infinite Darkness by artist Andrew Erdos.
We treated the Crystal City Gallery as a separate space and the large cut-glass punch bowl in the center received the most hearts here.
Next, we headed over to the Heineman Gallery to see what was popular there. The artwork with the most hearts was Jay Musler’s Cityscape.
After Heineman, we went over to the Contemporary Art and Design Wing. This part of the Museum got a LOT of love from our visitors. When we walked into the Nature Gallery, we were surprised at all the pink hearts we saw!
In the entire gallery, two objects were tied for “first place” with 12 hearts each: Continuous Mile by Liza Lou and Lynx After a Sketchbook Page by Albrecht Durer by Marta Klonowska.
The last stop in our trek around the Museum was the Innovation Center. Three visitors placed their hearts at the touchable Lunar Meteorite featured in the exhibition Journey to the Moon, How Glass Got Us There.
Special thanks to our colleagues in Guest Services for their help with this evaluation and to all our guests who shared their favorites pieces with us!