Your Experience Begins with an Eye-Dazzling Panorama of 6,500 Objects on Display in Sunlit Galleries

The comprehensive collection ranges from Early American bottles and flasks, Mason jars and paperweights, to outstanding work from today’s exciting contemporary glass artists.

Early in the 1960s, Frank H. Wheaton, Jr., president of Wheaton Industries, visited a prominent glass museum and discovered that much of the early American glass on exhibit was produced in southern New Jersey. He felt that these treasured museum pieces should be displayed in the area in which they were produced – southern New Jersey. Wheaton Village and the Museum of American Glass became his dream. In 1968, he searched for and finally purchased a collection of American glass from the Bucks County Glass Museum. This became the foundation for what is now the highly recognized Museum of American Glass Collection at WheatonArts.

The early collection was housed in a former residence on High Street in Millville. A group was assembled to design and build a “typical crossroads glass community at the turn of the century, centered around a glass museum.” In 1970, the first buildings at WheatonArts were completed and opened to the public. The present administration building temporarily housed the museum’s collection. As the first buildings were opened, construction began on the re-creation of the T. C. Wheaton Glass Factory and the Museum of American Glass.

In 1973, the T. C. Wheaton Glass Factory opened, followed shortly thereafter by the opening of the Museum of American Glass. Today, the collection has expanded to over 12,000 pieces, and is the most comprehensive exhibit of American glass in the world. The collection is arranged in chronological order beginning with glass from the first successful glass factory in America dating from 1739, to contemporary art glass.

Specially designed tours of the collection are available for collectors, interested adults and students. Even kids can follow a specially designed glass hunt. The museum is continually striving to educate the collector and increase the enjoyment of our visitors by continuing research of the collection, changing displays and organizing special exhibits throughout the year.