Displaying items by tag: north wing

When Mike Sorge thinks about the new expansion at the Corning Museum of Glass, he isn't thinking about glass.

Sorge, who owns Sorge's Italian Restaurant on Market Street in Corning, is more excited about the extra customers the new wing is expected to bring to his business and others.

The museum plans to unveil the highly-anticipated 100,000-square-foot North Wing on Friday, and local business owners and tourism officials are preparing for an increase in tourism spending when visitors come to Corning. Last year, more than 400,000 visitors came to the museum.

The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York—one of artnet News‘s recommended art day trips for New Yorkers) has pushed back the grand opening of its new north wing, designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners, from December of this year to March 20, 2015.

An email from the museum press representatives cited “this past winter’s record-breaking cold and snow” as being responsible for the delay. With construction on the $64 million project having fallen behind schedule, “this compressed the museum’s installation schedule for the fragile collection of contemporary art in glass.” The rescheduled opening date has been selected “out of an abundance of caution.”

The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY has revealed the final design of its North Wing expansion, which is expected to open to the public in late 2014. The addition was designed by New York-based architecture firm Thomas Phifer and Partners and will add 26,000-square-feet to the museum. The project will create a new gallery for contemporary glass art and a 500-seat glassmaking demonstration venue in Steuben Glass’ former factory ventilator building, which is next door to the museum.

The contemporary art gallery will be in the minimalist style and feature large exterior glass panels that will allow sunlight to flood into the galleries, which will include massive curvilinear concrete walls. A state-of-the art light-filtering system will be used to adjust the natural sunlight to create ideal lighting for viewing the art. The new gallery will be the largest space dedicated to the presentation of contemporary glass art in the world.    

The Corning Museum of Glass, which opened in 1951, is the world’s leading art museum dedicated to the presentation, display and interpretation of glass and glassmaking. Since its inception, the museum has made a point of incorporating glass into its architecture. Karol Wright, the executive director of the museum, said, ‘Thomas Phifer’s design for the North Wing gallery marks a dramatic new chapter in the rich history of modern and contemporary glass architecture on our campus.” The project, which will cost $64 million to bring to completion, is being full-funded by the museum’s major benefactor, Corning Incorporated.