The Toledo Museum of Art is bringing on a new leader in glass to further work in both the contemporary world of studio glass and the curation of its decades-spanning glass art collection.
Diane Wright, who has been the Carolyn and Richard Barry curator of glass at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., since March 2014, starts at the Toledo museum on Nov. 13, the museum announced Thursday.
Wright replaces Jutta Page, TMA’s former senior curator of glass and decorative arts who left in January to serve as founding executive director of Old Dominion University’s new Barry Art Museum, a museum with an emphasis on contemporary studio glass. The Barry Art Museum is also in Norfolk.
In addition to organizing exhibitions on the facility’s 10,600 square feet of floor space, Wright will oversee the museum’s 76,000-square-foot Glass Pavilion, said Brian Kennedy, TMA director. The $30 million, all-glass structure celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2016.
The Glass Pavilion houses the museum’s glass collection. It is also home to the Hot Shop, which hosts the museum’s Guest Artist Pavilion Project, a residency program that Mr. Kennedy said brings in both professional glass artists, and those who are not specifically trained in glass, but want to work with the medium.
That progression in the studio glass movement, which started in Toledo in 1962, is what the museum hopes to further, he said.
“We hope she will continue to advance the recognition of those two trends — the increasing creativity and technical specification of glass artists and on the other hand the increasing invention by artists who are not trained in glass to use glass as a medium for contemporary art,” he said. “That’s one side, the other is to develop our tremendous collection of glass from ancient times onward. We will see what sorts of exhibitions and publications and acquisitions and interpretation that Diane proposes in the coming years.”
Mr. Kennedy said Ms. Wright was chosen from a “very small pool of people” in the United States who specialize in both glass and decorative arts.
According to the Chrysler Museum of Art website, Wright has an extensive research background in leaded-glass windows and mosaics created for churches across the country by Tiffany Studios, and was responsible for the more than 10,000 objects in the museum’s glass galleries.
She has a bachelor of arts degree in history from the University of Utah, and a master’s degree in the history of decorative arts and design from Parsons the School for Design in New York, specializing in glass studies.
She has lectured, taught courses at George Mason University, the Rhode Island School of Design, Corcoran College of Art and Design and Parsons, and has had numerous literary articles published on the subject of glass, the website states.
Ms. Wright was unavailable for comment.
“Glass is really important to Toledo and in the broader framework. I think it's very encouraging to see Diane be excited about how Toledo is developing and the way glass projects are emerging with new glass studios and making work for local corporations and organizations,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Building the reputation of Toledo as the GlassCity is something I hope she will get very engaged with.”
Contact Roberta Gedert at rgedert@theblade.com, 419-724-6075, or on Twitter @RoGedert.
First Published September 21, 2017, 2:27 p.m.
