Links to Glass Museums by State A – L in United States

Glass Museums in the United States

About Figurines partial list of Links to  glass museums that have a focus on objects such as figurines and decorative arts made with glass, crystal, and ceramics.  This list is from states beginning with A (Arkansas) through L (Louisana).

ARKANSAS

Arkansas Arts Center

501 East 9th Street, Little Rock, AR 72202; (501) 372-4000; http://www.arkarts.com/

The second major area of collecting is contemporary objects in craft media, including teapots by contemporary artists, contemporary baskets, turned wood objects, studio glass, ceramics, metalwork and jewelry designed by artists. Among the highlights are works by Dale Chihuly, Albert Paley, Peter Voulkos and Dorothy Gill Barnes.

CALIFORNIA

J. Paul Getty Museum

1200 Getty Center Drive Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687; 310) 440-7330; www.getty.edu

Ancient to 18th c. European glass

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

5905 Wiltshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036; 213-857-6000; www.lacma.org

With 100,000 objects dating from ancient times to the present, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is the largest art museum in the western United States. A museum of international stature as well as a vital part of Southern California, LACMA shares its vast collections through exhibitions, public programs, and research facilities that attract nearly a million visitors annually.

 Historical Glass Museum (Foundation)

1153-57 N. Orange St., Redlands, CA 92373; 909-793-3333; www.glassmuseums.com

The Historical Glass Museum exhibits over 7,000 examples of glass pieces found in the home from the 1800s to present times. There are items from most American makers including Adams, Beatty, Aetna, Anchor Hocking, Atterbury, Heisey, Mckee, Morgantown, Bellaire, Blenko, Bryce, Duncan & Miller, Federal, Fenton, Fostoria, Gillender, Hazel Atlas, Imperial, Jeannette, Viking, Tiffany, and Steuben, to name a few. On display are nine rooms of glass vases, bowls, cruets, perfume bottles, paperweights, candlesticks, decanters, lamps, stemware, bells, glass hats, plates, cake stands, glass kitchenware, and other glass pieces.

Fine Arts Museum

de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA 94118; www.famsf.org

Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, 100 34th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94121

Today, de Young museum and the Legion of Honor’s collection contains over 124,000 works of art and is recognized for its European decorative arts, sculpture and painting; Ancient art from throughout the Mediterranean and the Near East; and one of the largest collections of works on paper in the country.

CONNECTICUT

Wadsworth Atheneum

600 Main St., Hartford CT 06103; (860) 278-2670; www.wadsworthatheneum.org

It’s more than just the first public art institution in the United States. We were the first museum in America to begin collecting contemporary American art – resulting in our world renowned Hudson River School collection.  We staged the first retrospective of Pablo Picasso in America; we were the first museum to both exhibit and purchase works by Surrealist artists – today almost every exhibition about Surrealism includes works borrowed from our collection.

Yale University Art Gallery

1111 Chapel Street (at York Street), New Haven, CT 06520; 203-432.0600; http://artgallery.yale.edu/

Historical Survey: American, Steuben; Tiffany, etc.

Lyman Allen Museum

625 William St., New London CT 06320; 860-443-2545; www.lymanallyn.org

Housed in a handsome Neo-Classical building designed by Charles A. Platt, the permanent collection includes over 10,000 paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, furniture and decorative arts, with an emphasis on American art from the 18th through 20th centuries.

DELAWARE

Winterthur Museum

Route 52 (5105 Kennett Pike), Winterthur, DE 19735; 800-448-3883; www.winterthur.org

Henry Francis du Pont entertained family and friends in grand style. The 175 rooms, many of them with historical architecture, are furnished with his outstanding collection of antiques and objects added since his death. These masterfully designed spaces promise to inspire, enlighten, and delight.  In the Galleries, explore unique displays crafted by Winterthur curators with selections from the collection of nearly 90,000 objects. These spaces are devoted to themes such as the history of style and specific media, including furniture, ceramics and glass, metals, textiles, and paintings and prints.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Daughters of the American Revolution / DAR Museum

1776 D Street N.W., Washington, DC 20006; 202-628-1776; dar.org/museum/

Beautiful collection of 500 pieces of glass and art glass pieces.

Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution

Jefferson Drive at 12th St SW, Washington DC; 202-633-4880; www.asia.si/edu/

The Smithsonian Institution has two museums of Asian art: the Freer Gallery of Art which opened to the public in 1923, and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, which welcomed its first visitors in 1987. Both are physically connected by an underground passageway, and ideologically linked through the study, exhibition, and sheer love of Asian art. In addition, the Freer Gallery contains an important collection of 19th century American art punctuated by James McNeill

Whistler’s Peacock Room, perhaps one of the earliest (and certainly one of the most controversial) art installations on record.

Hillwood Museum

415 Linnean Ave. NW., Washington DC 20008; (202) 686-5807 http://www.hillwoodmuseum.org/

Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens has one of the most comprehensive collections of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Russian Imperial art outside of Russia, as well as an extensive collection of eighteenth-century French decorative arts. Highlights include a diamond crown worn by Empress Alexandra at her marriage to Nicholas II; Beauvais tapestries designed by François Boucher; two Imperial Easter eggs by Carl Fabergé; La Nuit by William-Adolphe Bouguereau; and a collection of costumes and accessories worn by Mrs. Post or her family.

National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, National Mall, 14th Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC www.americanhistory.si.edu

17th-20th c. European and American, including American art glass, Steuben, Tiffany.

Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Museum 1661 Pennsylvania Avenue NW (at 17th Street)Washington DC 20006; (202) 633-2850. http://americanart.si.edu/renwick/index.cfm

The Renwick Gallery, a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, features one of the finest collections of American craft in the United States. Its collections, exhibition program and publications highlight the best craft objects and decorative arts from the 19th century to the present. One-of-a-kind pieces created from clay, fiber, glass, metal, and wood from American Art’s permanent collection of contemporary craft are displayed on a rotating basis in the second-floor galleries.

FLORIDA

Lightner Museum

75 King Street, St. Augustine, Florida 32084 904-824-2874 www.lightnermuseum.org

Relics of America’s Gilded Age are elegantly exhibited on the museum’s three floors. Costumes, furnishings, mechanical musical instruments and other artifacts give you a glimpse into 19th century daily life. The Lightner collection includes beautiful examples of cut glass, Victorian art glass and the stained glass work of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

 Morse Museum of American Art

445 North Park Avenue, Winter Park, FL 32789 (407) 645-5311; www.morsemuseum.org

The world’s most comprehensive collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) is housed at The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art. The Museum’s Tiffany collection includes jewelry, pottery, paintings, art glass, leaded-glass windows and lamps, and the chapel interior the artist designed for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The Museum’s holdings also include a major collection of American art pottery and representative collections of late 19th- and early 20th-century American painting, graphics, and decorative art.

GEORGIA

The High Museum of Art

1280 Peachtree Street, N.E. Atlanta, Georgia 30309; 404-733-HIGH; www.high.org

The High’s decorative arts and design collection is the most comprehensive survey of American decorative arts in the southeastern United States with more than 2,000 objects dating from 1640 to the present. Highlights include The Virginia Carroll Crawford Collection of American decorative art with important works by Alexander Roux, Herter Brothers, Tiffany & Co. and Frank Lloyd Wright. Other notable gifts include The Frances and Emory Cocke Collection of English Ceramics from 1640 to 1840. Recent acquisitions have focused on design from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including key additions of Gerrit Rietveld’s Red/Blue Chair (1918) and Ron Arad’s Blo Void 1 (2006).

ILLINOIS

Art Institute of Chicago

111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60603-6404; 312-443-0849 www.artic.edu

Chicago History Museum

1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL 60614, 312.642.4600; www.chicagohs.org

The Museum’s holdings of more than 40,000 Decorative and Industrial Arts artifacts include furniture, metalwork, ceramics, glass, agricultural and military equipment, folk art, Native American materials, musical instruments, toys, dolls, vehicles, and numerous products and tools.

Illinois State Museum

Spring and Edwards Streets, Springfield, IL (217)782-7386 www.museum.state.il.us

INDIANA

Greentown Glass Museum

112 N Meridian St Greentown, IN 46936-1220 (317) 628-6206.; (no separate website) Mailing address: P.O. Box 161, Greentown, IN 46936; 765/628-6206

Glass made by the Indiana Tumbler & Goblet Co. that produced unique forms and colors, including Chocolate Glass, Golden Agate (Holly Amber), Nile Green, etc.

Indianapolis Museum of Art

4000 Michigan Rd, Indianapolis, IN 46208; (317) 920-2659; www.imamuseum.org

English porcelain of the 18th century, including Wedgwood, Worcester, Chelsea and Derby, including a rare Wedgwood Portland Vase. European porcelain, including Sévres, Meissen, Nymphenburg and Vienna.  European and American glass from the late 19th through the early 20th century, including pieces by René Lalique, Emile Gallé, Louis Comfort Tiffany and Josef Hoffmann.

The Glass Museum

309 S. Franklin St., Dunkirk, IN 47336-1218; Phone 765-768-6872 http://www.dunkirkpubliclibrary.com/

There are over 8,000 pieces of glassware from 110 factories around the world currently on exhibit in the museum.  We primarily have glass that was made locally at Indiana Glass in Dunkirk and other area factories including 25 leaded lamps, 25 leaded windows and an exhibit of cup plates, which were primarily manufactured on the East coast. We have pressed glass-making tools including a hand press. There is a leaded glass mural showing glass blowing and shaping.  There are many Dagenhart, Carnival Glass, lead crystal, Milk glass, Diamond Point, King’s Crown, Albany Glass, Norse, Sandwich, Tiara, household and farm items.

IOWA

Brunnier Art Museum (Iowa State University)

290 Scheman Building, Ames, IA 50011-1110; 515-294-3342; http://www.museums.iastate.edu/

The Brunnier Art Museum is the state’s only accredited museum emphasizing a decorative arts collection, and one of the nation’s few museums located within a performing arts and conference complex (Iowa State Center). Founded in 1975, the museum is named after its benefactors, Iowa State alumnus Henry J. Brunnier and his wife Ann. The decorative arts collection they donated, the Brunnier Collection, is extensive, consisting of ceramics, glass, dolls, ivory, jade, and enameled metals.

KANSAS

Prairie Museum of Art and History/Thomas County Historical Society

1905 S. Franklin, Colby, KS 67701; (785) 460-4590; http://www.prairiemuseum.org/home.html

World-Class Kuska Collection of dolls, furniture, clothing, quilts, toys, glass, ceramics, silver, souvenirs, household items, tools, musical instruments, coins, clocks, stamps, guns, minerals, and art. Experience early prairie life in a sod house, a one-room school, a country church and a 1930s farmstead located on Interstate 70 on the high plains of Kansas.

Spencer Museum of Art

1301 Mississippi St, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045 ; 785.864.4710; http://wwww.spencerart.ku.edu/

Wichita Art Museum

1400 West Museum Boulevard, Wichita KS 67203-3296; (316) 268-4921 www.wichitaartmuseum.org

Steuben glass and Chihuly installations.

LOUISIANA

New Orleans Museum of Art

317 City Park Le Long Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70124; (504) 488-2631; www.noma.org

The look of glass, ceramic, and silver wares for the table and for decoration changed with the application of new practices. Mold-pressed glass became widespread early in the century and glassworkers used the technique to create jardinieres and vases. Ceramic manufacturers employed transfer printing to decorate dinner and tea wares, affordable alternatives to hand-painted ceramics. Silver tablewares gleamed with a thin coating of silver applied by electroplating, the fusing of the precious metal to a base metal after fabrication. New processes, as well as modifications and rediscoveries of old techniques, allowed an upsurge of options and styles, attainable for the average person.

Pressed glass, transfer-printed ceramics and silver produced by firms such as Sowerby Glassworks, Josiah Wedgwood and  Sons, Minton Pottery and Porcelain Factory, and Elkington and Company will be on view. MASS PRODUCED will highlight  rich examples of nineteenth-century British decorative arts in NOMA’s collection and explore the fascinating  relationships between design, technology, and mass production.