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GlassWeekend is a major contemporary glass event that runs from June 10 to 12 at WheatonArts in Millville, New Jersey. The three-day biennial weekend, first organized in 1985, brings together an international community of leading collectors, museum curators, gallery dealers, and artists for lectures, demonstrations and exhibitions. The event is organized by The Creative Glass Center of America at WheatonArts (CGCA) and the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass (AACG). Over the course of three days, Millville, New Jersey, will be ground-zero for glass art auctions, workshops, and lectures.
Glass art legend Dan Dailey will speak Saturday. Other highlights of Saturday’s lectures include a round-table of museum curators discussing their approach to exhibition planning moderated by Newark Museum decorative arts curator Ulysses Dietz and including Elizabeth Agro, Philadelphia Museum of Art associate curator of American modern and contemporary crafts and decorative arts; Renwick curator Nicholas Bell; and the fast-rising Ron Labaco, recently appointed curator of decorative arts and design at the Museum of Arts and Design.
Washington Glass School will be represented at the Biennial by Tim Tate, Allegra Marquart and Michael Janis – Michael will also be named “Rising Star” by The Creative Glass Center of America at WheatonArts and the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass.
Millville, New Jersey has long been associated with glass. In 1739 when Casper Wistar founded America’s first successful glass factory near Alloway Creek, glassmaking and South Jersey became inextricably fused. From humble entrepreneurial beginnings, glass manufacturing ultimately became the region’s major innovative industry by the late 19th century.
In 1904, the celebrated poet, Carl Sandburg, proclaimed:
“Down in southern New Jersey, they make glass. By day and by night, the fires burn on in Millville . . . Big, black flames shooting out smoke and sparks; bottles, bottles, bottles, of every tint and hue . . . that marks the death of sand and the birth of glass.”
Although the production of window and bottle glass may have left Cumberland, Salem and Gloucester counties, the studio glass movement has been flourishing. WheatonArts and the Creative Glass Center of America (CGCA) in Millville have nurtured a growing number of talented individuals to use glass as their primary medium by offering its facilities to artists from around the world.
Click HERE to jump to GlassWeekend’s program.
June 10th – 12th, 2011
WheatonArts1501 Glasstown Road
Millville, New Jersey 08332
Tel: 800 998 4552
Website: http://www.glassweekend.com/
for some photos of GlassWeekend 2009 – click HERE.