We’d heard that the Corning Museum of Glass was worth visiting, so when we needed a break from wineries, we set out on a day trip to check it out.
The Corning Museum is located in Corning, New York, in Steuben County. I knew of Corning, Inc., of course, but hadn’t realized that so many different glass and crystal manufacturers had been located in the area.
The Corning Museum of Glass houses one of the world’s largest collections of glass from antiquity to the present, and you could easily spend a full day there, especially if you take in several of the live demonstrations. We only stayed about four hours and were pretty much glassed-out by then, but we saw only one demonstration, flew through some exhibits and skipped a few others entirely.
The museum is basically three museums in one: an art museum, a historical museum and a science museum. There was a large gallery of historical glass, dating from several millennia ago to the present. We found this both interesting and also overwhelming after a while. The more recent historical items include a number of pieces from Louis Comfort Tiffany and other famous glass makers.
There were a couple of galleries of modern art glass, and while we’re not huge modern art people, some of the works were very impressive. Finally, there are sections on more scientific and practical glass, such as cookware (of course), telescope optics, lighthouse lenses, fiber optics, etc.
