Ithaca, New York Day 3 ~ The Corning Museum of Glass

We aren't huge museum go-ers, but had heard that the Corning Museum of Glass was one not to miss, so off we went on a very rainy Monday.

The parking is a bit down the road, where a shuttle is provided, or you can just walk the 1/4 mile or so......

 

When we checked-in, we were given the brochure of all of the glass demonstrations throughout the day.....

 

So we figured out which demonstrations we wanted to see and walked throughout the museum between the demonstrations. We saw....

• Hot Glass - where the presenters creates a small vase (pretty much what you see in any glassblowing shop)
• Don't Try This At Home - this was interesting mostly because it took place in their mobile hot glass classroom - which they drive to places to bring glassmaking to those that would not otherwise have the experience 

• Flameworking - this was very interesting as the presenter used two rods of glass to create art

• Secrets of Glass - this was rather redundant of the Don't Try This At Home presentation
• Glassbreaking -  this was one of the more interesting presentations where we learned how glass is created to cause it to break in some form (think car front windows). 

 

Of course, there was a lot of creative and interesting pieces of glass art - quite difficult to capture in photos.....

 

 

Then we went to The Studio building of the museum where classes are conducted and professional glassmakers rent space to create their art. The super cool thing about this area was that it was casual and open to anyone who wanted to watch..... The verbiage next to the door says: Feel free to wander down this hallway to our artist workshops to see artists and students at work. 

 

 

And so we did.......and found this group working together.....

  

We ended up spending 6-hours here and really enjoyed it.