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Donor Profile: Dwight and Lorri Lanmon

“It was a boyhood disease,” Dwight Lanmon said of his early love of glass. “I was haunting antiques shops by the time I was in high school.” You might then say it was destiny that brought Dwight and his wife Lorri to Corning, where Dwight spent 19 years working at The Corning Museum of Glass, culminating in his time as director from 1981 to 1992.

Dwight and Lorri Lanmon

Although Dwight’s career started in an entirely different field—he first worked as a research engineer in the aerospace industry in Southern California—he was always drawn to glass. Dwight began to form a collection. He recalls buying his first piece of Carder-Steuben glass: a gold Aurene-lined calcite compote. He later added Tiffany glass and the occasional piece of Carnival glass.

In Los Angeles, he began to focus on 18th-century English drinking glasses. To feed his interest in antiques, he took night classes at the University of California at Los Angeles where he met a Curator of Decorative Arts at the Los Angeles County Museum who would later become his mentor. Gradually, he realized that he could find far greater satisfaction working as a museum curator than in his aerospace work. Read more →

How glass heals

If you think about how glass relates to medicine, you might first conjure images of fingers cut on a broken bottle. But glass has a long history as a curer of wounds and an enabler of healing, not just hurting: from jars for ointments and medicines, the mortar and pestle for preparing prescriptions, glass eyes, test tubes and syringes for blood analysis, and even ultra-sharp surgical blades made from obsidian.

But a novel way for doctors to use glass inside the body dates to the late 1960s, when a scientist named Dr. Larry Hench turned what seemed to be a problem—a glass that dissolved in water—into an answer: glass that could be put into the body to promote healing, even as it dissolved away in the body’s fluids.

You may know that soda-lime glass is the most common family of glass. It is made by melting together silicon dioxide (also called “silica”or “quartz”) from sand, sodium from washing soda, and calcium from limestone. Within the soda-lime family, by changing the amount of these ingredients plus many others, manufacturers can make glass that works for everything from beer bottles to stained glass windows. It’s like how a baker can start with flour,sugar, and water, to make anything from a pancake to a birthday cake!

GlassBarge: By the numbers

In May 2018, The Corning Museum of Glass launched a statewide tour to commemorate the 150th anniversary of glassmaking moving to Corning from Brooklyn.

Barge with stadium seating docked on the Hudson River with visitors watching glassblowing.

GlassBarge docked in Troy, N.Y., on June 21, 2018.

In 1868, Brooklyn Flint Glass Company loaded its equipment onto canal boats bound for Corning, N.Y., thus setting in motion 150 years of glassmaking innovation in Corning that has shaped the modern world. GlassBarge retraced and expanded upon the 1868 journey by traveling from Brooklyn to Buffalo before making its way home to the Finger Lakes, offering free glassmaking demonstrations to the public along the way. The tour also coincided with the Erie Canal Bicentennial (2017-2025)—for which GlassBarge was a 2018 signature event—as well as the centennial of the New York State Barge Canal. Read more →

Celebrate good times with glass!

The stoic bank examiner, Mr. Carter from the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life, made it clear to George Bailey that he wanted to spend Christmas with family in Elmira, New York. That’s just down the road from The Corning Museum of Glass. Do your holiday plans include visiting folks in the area? If so, we’d love to help you fan the flames of fun. This holiday season we’re offering a special Celebrations! tour daily at 11 am and 1 pm. Each object on the tour celebrates something special in a unique and glassy way!

Here’s a sampling of what you might see:

*Virtue of Blue*, Jeroen Verhoeven, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, designed in 2010, made in 2016.
© Jeroen Veroeven. 2016.3.8.

New Glass Review 43: An Outside Perspective on the Best of Contemporary Glass

Get excited and check the mail, because New Glass Review returns this month for its 43rd issue.

An annual exhibition-in-print, New Glass Review features 100 of the most timely, innovative projects in glass produced during the year. Artworks include sculptures, vessels, installations, and other works in glass by emerging and established artists.

A flagship publication of The Corning Museum of Glass since 1980, New Glass Review is a cyclical reintroduction into the world of contemporary glass and the artists who inhabit it; artists who continually push the boundaries of the material and the limits of their expression.

Following an open call for submissions that receives hundreds of entries every year from countries across the world, New Glass Review is curated by the Museum’s curator of postwar and contemporary glass and a changing panel of guest curators. While the search for the Museum’s next contemporary curator was underway this past summer, Samantha De Tillio was invited to lead the selection process. De Tillo was joined by Davin K. Ebanks, Kim Harty, and Kimberly Thomas.

Amy Schwartz & William Gudenrath Honored with 2023 James Renwick Alliance for Craft Award

The Studio’s Amy Schwartz and William (Bill) Gudenrath were honored on Saturday, May 6 in Washington DC with the James Renwick Alliance for Craft (JRA) Distinguished Craft Educator Award for excellence and innovation in education. The biennial award was celebrated at the JRA Spring Craft Weekend with a Symposium, Gala, and Awards Brunch. Recognized for their influence on future artists and significant contributions to American education in the craft field, Amy and Bill’s selection as honorees was the first time in the ceremony’s 20-year history that both makers and educators were honored at the same time.

William (Bill) Gudenrath and Amy Schwartz with their award at the Smithsonian Museum, Washington DC, May 6, 2023. Photo courtesy of the James Renwick Alliance.

Amy and Bill are the latest on a long list of distinguished honorees—the JRA Award has recognized some of the most influential craft artists in American history. This year, the other nominees included ceramic artist, social activist, and spoken word poet Roberto Lugo (the youngest artist to ever receive the Master of the Medium award); furniture maker Kristina Madsen; and curator, quilter, author, art historian, and aerospace engineer Carolyn Mazloomi.

CMoG Named One of the “7 Glass Wonders of the World”

Capping a truly momentous year for glass, The Corning Museum of Glass has achieved a new distinction: being named one of the “7 Glass Wonders of the World.”

The announcement was made during the closing festivities of the United Nations International Year of Glass (IYOG) 2022. The year officially concluded with a Conference and Ceremony at the University of Tokyo, Japan, on December 8-9, which was attended by our very own President and Executive Director Karol Wight. This event was followed by an official debriefing held at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on December 14.

Lino Tagliapietra in the Museum’s Amphitheater Hot Shop, May 13, 2022.

Lino Tagliapietra may be retiring, but not before one final visit to The Corning Museum of Glass. Last weekend was a monumental one for Lino, the glassblowers and staff at the Museum, and all the guests who filled the Amphitheater Hot Shop to see the Maestro at work during what will be his final performance in Corning.

To celebrate Lino’s enduring legacy, we asked those lucky enough to know and work with him, to describe the impact he has made on the glass world. To no surprise, the response was fervent and unanimous: Lino’s impact is, and will always be, extraordinary!