MUSEUM OF AMERICAN GLASS RECEIVED AACG’S 2017 ANNUAL AWARD

MILLVILLE, NJ (October 18, 2017) – The Museum of American Glass at WheatonArts was selected for the 2017 Annual Award from the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass (AACG) for its latest exhibition, Emanation 2017: An Invitational Contemporary Art Exhibit. The AACG awards committee wrote “[the] current Emanations exhibit is an absolute knock-out. It sets new boundaries for museum exhibits. This is in addition to its scholarly display of historical glass and it’s contemporary glass exhibit that is constantly updated with work by upcoming glass artists. It is agreed that the Emanations exhibit is top-notch, and deserves recognition”. This is the second time the Museum has been awarded the honor, the first being in 2005. The AACG Annual Award comes with an unrestricted grant of five thousand dollars given to an institution or organization once a year for their contributions to the contemporary glass movement. The award also invited Kristin Qualls, WheatonArts’ Director of Exhibitions and Collections, to present the AACG lecture at the fair for Sculpture Objects & Functional Art (SOFA) which took place in Chicago on November 4th, 2017.

The continuing “Emanation” project forwards a strategic goal to enhance programs and exhibits at WheatonArts through a deepened level of collaboration and interactivity with artists within a creative sanctuary that enables new ideas to emanate forth. This project includes three major program components: artist residencies during which invited artists to experiment with and create new work using glass; a six-month exhibition of the work created during the residencies with an emphasis on each artist’s creative process; and education and interpretation geared to public audiences of all ages and backgrounds. Emanation 2017’s participating artists are Emily Brown, Vanessa German, Michael Joo, Lorna Simpson, Therman Statom, Matthew Szösz, and the artist team, Flock the Optic. (Artist bios below). The exhibition remains open through December 31, 2017.

For more information about WheatonArts’ programs, call 856-825-6800 or 800-998-4552, or visit wheatonarts.org. WheatonArts is open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., April through December. Closed Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. WheatonArts strives to ensure the accessibility of its exhibitions, events, and programs to all persons with disabilities. Please provide two weeks notice of additional needs. Patrons with hearing and speech disabilities may contact WheatonArts through the New Jersey Relay Service (TRS) 800-852-7899 or by dialing 711. Funding has been made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey Cultural Trust. WheatonArts receives general operating support from the New Jersey Historical Commission, Division of Cultural Affairs in the New Jersey Department of State, and is supported in part by the New Jersey Department of State, Division of Travel and Tourism.

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About WheatonArts
WheatonArts and Cultural Center, founded as Wheaton Village in 1968, is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization with a mission to engage artists and audiences in an evolving exploration of creativity. The mission will be advanced through the interpretation of collections and exhibitions; education initiatives and culturally diverse public programs; residencies and other opportunities for artists. With a history spanning four decades, WheatonArts has earned regional, national and international recognition for its unique collections and programs. The Museum of American Glass is at the heart of the Center, housing the most comprehensive collection of glass produced in America – from the first glass bottles made in America to celebrated works by Dale Chihuly, Paul Stankard, and other contemporary artists who work in glass. Visitors experience the art of glassmaking, ceramics and flameworking in the Artists Studios. From April through December the Museum of American Glass and Gallery of Fine Craft present special exhibitions. WheatonArts also offers traditional and multi-cultural programs, classes, workshops, performances, and weekend festivals. The award-winning Museum Stores offer traditional and contemporary art and craft in all mediums.

AACG

The Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass (AACG) is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to further the development and appreciation of art made from glass. The AACG informs the public, including collectors, critics, and curators, by encouraging and supporting museum and art center glass exhibitions, public programs, regional collector groups, and awards grants annually to arts organizations in support of specific educational purposes.

Emily Brown

Growing up in Chester County, Pennsylvania and spending summers in inland midcoast Maine, Emily Brown is deeply affected by the natural landscape, drawing from textures and surfaces found in the wild for her drawings, paintings, and prints. Other sources for her imagery include beloved toys and the figures of humans and animals in motion photographed in the 1880s by Eadweard Muybridge. These provide a presence that can be variously humorous, tragic, romantic, or ambiguous. Brown’s paintings, drawings and prints are included the following collections: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Princeton University Art Museum, The James A. Michener Museum, The MacDowell Colony, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Free Library of Philadelphia, The Alex Katz Foundation, AllianceBernstein in Tokyo, and the United States Embassy, Astana, Kazakhstan. She has been awarded fellowships from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, The MacDowell Colony, La Napoule Art Foundation (Cote D’Azur, France,) and Wave Hill in the Bronx, NY. She has also received a Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and grants from the Leeway Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Independence Foundation. Brown attended Middlebury College; the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania.

Flock the Optic

Flock the Optic consists of three individuals brought together under extraordinary circumstances. ABC was a small time DJ working on a Peruvian alpaca farm, spinning both the finest yarn and the phattest beats. Stitch was born under a chromyl moon in a freight car and made her living patching clothing for wanderlust buskers traveling west. Mummbles emerged from the swamplands of Western Dakota with a rapid comprehension of 90s magic-eye posters, which garnered him county wide fame. The Flock met one mid-morning in the flatlands of the Skagit Valley, each arriving independently in response to a newspaper advertisement for experienced astrologists. As they approached each other, an instantaneous rainbow aura appeared around the trio, highlighting them in an intense spectrum wash, as a flock of snow geese flew silently overhead. The trio was momentarily released from gravity and floated together. Since that day they have been linked telepathically, ornithologically, and chromologically.

Vanessa German

Vanessa German is a visual and performance artist based in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Homewood. Homewood is the community that is the driving force behind German’s powerful performance work, and whose cast-off relics form the language of her copiously embellished sculptures. As a citizen artist, German explores the power of art and love as a transformative force in the dynamic cultural ecosystem of communities and neighborhoods. She is the founder of Love Front Porch and the ARThouse, a community arts initiative for the children of Homewood. Her work is in private and public collections including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Progressive Art Collection, David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, Snite Museum of Art, among others. She has been exhibited widely, including the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, etc. Her work has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR’s All Things Considered and in The Huffington Post, O Magazine and Essence Magazine. She is the recipient of the 2015 L. C. Tiffany Foundation grant. Vanessa German is represented by Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York.

Michael Joo

Michael Joo is interested in the conflicts and coexistence between art and science, nature and technology, history and perception, the real and the imaginary. He has had solo exhibitions at SCAD, Savannah, Georgia; Blain|Southern Gallery, London; Anchorage Museum, Alaska; Rodin Gallery, Seoul; MIT List Visual Art Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the South Korean Pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale together with Do-Ho-Suh. A few of Joo’s recent group exhibitions include Transforming Minds: Buddhism in Art, Asia Society Gallery, Hong Kong; Glasstress, Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti, Venice; and NeoHooDoo: Art of a Forgotten Faith, P.S.1 MoMA, New York. Joo’s work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Hammer Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, and more. In 2006, Joo was awarded the Grand Prize of the 6th Gwangju Biennale, along with artist Song Dong. He is a 2006 recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship as well as the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1999.

Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson was born in 1960 in Brooklyn, New York, and received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. When she emerged from the graduate program at San Diego in 1985, she was already considered a pioneer of conceptual photography. Simpson is known for working in a wide range of mediums including photograph-and-text works, videos, drawings, collage and paintings that confront and challenge conventional views of culture, representation, and memory. In her latest works, lone figures amidst nebulous spaces are a return to and departure from her earlier unidentified figures in a deepened exploration of contemporary culture. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Jeu de Paume, Paris; and Haus der Kunst, Munich, amongst others, as well as important international exhibitions such as the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Documenta11 in Kassel, Germany, and the 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.

Therman Statom

Therman Statom – sculptor, glass artist, and painter – is most notably known as a pioneer of the contemporary glass movement for his life-size glass ladders, chairs, tables, constructed box-like paintings, and small-scale houses; all created through the technique of gluing glass plate together. Sandblasted surfaces become a canvas for spontaneous, vibrant colors and line work, which take nuances from Abstract Expressionism and concepts of Minimalism, while simultaneously incorporating a twist by using blown-glass elements and found objects. Much of the latter half of Statom’s career has been focused on the importance of educational programming within the arts. He has taken a deep interested in employing workshops as a catalyst for social change and in effect, positively impacting a community. Working directly with the artist himself, adults and children alike share a combined experience of exploring art making via a hands-on experience.

Matthew Szösz

Matthew Szösz creates new approaches to form by developing innovative methods of employing materials including glass. Born in Rhode Island, Matthew Szösz has received two Bachelor’s degrees (Fine Arts and Industrial Design), as well as a Masters in Fine Art from Rhode Island School of Design. He has won several awards, including the 2009 Jutta Cuny-Franz Memorial Award, an L. C. Tiffany Foundation grant, and the 2015 Irvin Borowsky Prize. He has been an artist in residence at university programs across the US, Denmark, Japan, and Australia; taught workshops and classes at numerous glass venues; and has exhibited widely at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, GlazenHuis (Flemish Centre for Contemporary Glass Art) and the Museum of Art and Design in NYC, among others.