Museum of Glass

2nd Adult Admission Free

Offer: Receive one FREE adult admission to the Museum of Glass with purchase of an accompanying adult admission at regular price. Hot glass, cool art and the Chihuly Bridge of Glass! Live glass blowing in the heart of Tacoma's new Museum District.

Coupon Expires: 12-31-08

The Museum of Glass is a fine arts museum dedicated to presenting the medium of glass within the context of contemporary art in all media. The Museum presents the richness and diversity of the art of our time and explores how glass draws from and contributes to the many facets of contemporary art. In addition to the Hot Shop Amphitheater where visitors can watch artists work, the facilities include galleries, outdoor exhibition areas, a theater, studio, grand hall, store and café.

It began in August of 1992 in the course of a conversation between two friends, Phil Phibbs, who had recently retired as president of the University of Puget Sound and artist Dale Chihuly who had grown up in a neighborhood near the campus and had attended the university. Dr. Phibbs suggested that Tacoma should have a glass museum. He reasoned that artists from the Pacific Northwest had played a major role in the Studio Glass Movement as it developed around the world. In particular, Dale Chihuly had influenced the movement significantly, first through his personal artistry and then through the Pilchuck Glass School, which he had founded in the early 1970s with Anne and John Hauberg.

A few weeks later, Phil Phibbs outlined his idea and the rationale for a glass museum to the Executive Council for a Greater Tacoma, a group of business and governmental leaders. He fully expected to be politely dismissed. Instead, he was invited to stay for the next presentation. It was a plan for the redevelopment of the Thea Foss Waterway, which at the time was an empty industrial wasteland along a narrow channel of water so polluted that it qualified as a federal Superfund clean-up site. The Chairman of the Council, George Russell, concluded that the idea of a glass museum coincided quite beautifully with the need for a dynamic anchor tenant on the restored waterway.

It was serendipitous that the ideas to build a glass museum and redevelop the Thea Foss Waterway coincided to become a civic undertaking. Now the Museum is part of a larger cultural district, but it was ten years of visionary leadership, energy and hard work that made the dreams of a revitalized waterway a reality.

Although initially the Museum focused exclusively on Dale Chihuly, the artist himself insisted that the Museum should expand its mission to include works in glass by artists worldwide. This proved to be a practical shift as Tacoma met its goal of recognizing its native son with the spectacular Chihuly Bridge of Glass, and the Museum was able to broaden its appeal by honoring international artists. In the late 1990s, the mission was again refined to specify that the medium of glass would be presented within the context of contemporary art.

The Chihuly Bridge of Glass is a 500-foot-long pedestrian bridge linking downtown Tacoma, Washington, to the city's waterfront, the Thea Foss Waterway. Conceived by Dale Chihuly, artist and native of Tacoma, and designed in collaboration with Arthur Andersson of Andersson·Wise Architects, it is a display of color and form soaring seventy feet into the air. The Chihuly Bridge of Glass, commissioned by the Museum of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art, was gifted by the museum to the city of Tacoma. On July 6, 2002, the bridge was dedicated and opened to the public.