[Leica] Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion

[hlritter at bex.net (Howard Ritter)]

When we moved to Toledo in 1991, we discovered an art museum whose stature, 
like Detroit?s, is reflective of the city?s past importance and economic 
vigor rather than the present state of affairs. Toledo was also one of the 
national ?glass cities?, with Libbey Glass, Libbey-Owens-Ford, and 
Owens-Corning, many of whose founders and executives lived in Toledo and 
contributed heavily to the city?s civic and cultural endowments. One of the 
prominent recipients of these families? largess was the TMA, and being 
located in the ?Glass City? as well as having had the Libbey family as one 
of its founders, iit was only logical that the museum acquire a Glass 
Pavilion, which opened 8 years ago. Constructed principally of structural 
glass panels, it was designed by a pair of Japanese architects, SANAA, who 
won the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2010. As when we were Seattleites and 
hardly ever went up the Space Needle, yesterday we made only our second 
visit to the Glass Pavilion, to take out-of-town friends there. This had two 
results, one that I am going to take a glass-blowing workshop this summer, 
and the other that I found a few beautiful glass sculptures to photograph. 
Dale Chihuly (also of Seattle) seems to have a strong presence in Toledo, 
and Italian artist Lino Tagliapietra had a brief stint as 
master-in-residence here earlier this year. Tagliapietra?s installation is 
bird-themed and was scheduled to coincide with the Biggest Week in American 
Birding, which takes place every May at the Black Swamp Bird Observatory in 
a preserve only a few miles away, where migratory birds following a major 
south-to-north flyway head out over Lake Erie bound for Canada. 

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/TMAGlass/

?howard