A new exhibit opens at the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover next week.
2022 is the U.N. Year of Glass and Art Deco Glass from the David Huchthausen Collection will celebrate that theme.
“It was organized by the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington," said Biggs curator Laura Fravel. "David Huchthausen is a glass artist himself. He went to school for architecture and then while he was a student he became very interested in how glass could internally reflect light and then use that in his own work.”
Fravel says the over 200 items in the collection offer a window into glass art in the early 20th century when pieces tended to be brightly colored with clean lines and geometric shapes.
She also notes that this exhibition has an international flavor.
“There are makers from France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy - even some Swedish glass - and then also some American glass," she said. "We get to see how American manufacturers are responding to this movement and that trumps the studio glass movement here in the 1970’s.”
Fravel describes art deco glass as very crisp, linear and well thought out. She notes it was in part a response to art nouveau, the pre-World War I movement characterized mostly by natural forms rather than architectural forms.
Art Deco Glass exhibit opens November 5 and runs through February 20.
Delaware Public Media' s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
