Contemporary Glass with Susie Silbert

Glass has been used in art for millennia. Traditionally valued for its form and function, the last 70 years have seen rapid innovations in studio glass technique and revolutions in its content. Contemporary artists are pushing the material to its limits and using the ubiquitous medium to take on issues from globalization to environmental conservation and human rights.

On Wednesday December 8, the Artists Archives will host Contemporary Glass with Susie Silbert, a virtual program featuring the Curator of Postwar & Contemporary Glass from the prestigious Corning Museum of Glass in New York. During the richly illustrated 1-hour presentation, Silbert will showcase advancements in the field and the exciting roster of artists creating them.

As Silbert explains, “one of the things that excites me about contemporary glass is the way that is has come from a medium that only a few people have access to, to one that people all over the globe are using to really think through ideas, to engage materiality, to develop new concepts that really haven’t ever existed before”

Presented as part of the Archives’ current exhibition Kindred Objects: Ceramics & Glass from the Western Reserve, the program will include the work of exhibiting regional artists. An audience Q & A will follow the presentation.

About Presenter Susie J. Silbert: Susie J. Silbert was appointed Curator of Modern and Contemporary Glass at The Corning Museum of Glass in 2016. Trained in glass working and design history, she is motivated by the complex and intertwined histories of material, making, and makers in all media. As part of her curatorial role at The Museum, Silbert serves as the editor of New Glass Review, an exhibition-in-print designed to provide a snapshot of global glass working on an annual basis, selects the recipient of the Museum’s annual Rakow Commission, awarded annually to an artist not currently represented in the Museum’s collection, and serves on the committee for the Specialty Glass Residency. She is the curator of New Glass Now and the co-curator, with Colleen McFarland Rademaker, of New Glass Now | Context.

Prior to joining the Corning Museum, she was an independent curator working across disciplines, as well as a lecturer on the History of Glass at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her exhibitions include #F*nked!, exploring the relationship between digital interfaces and handmade objects at the Kansas City Art Institute; Concept:Process, at Parsons The New School for Design; Material Location at UrbanGlass; and SPRAWL, an interdisciplinary exhibition interpreting urban development at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogs for the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, The Center for Art in Wood, and UrbanGlass as well as American Art Collector, GLASS Quarterly, Metalsmith, the American Craft Council website and the book CAST, on casting in all media, edited by Jen Townshend and Renee Zettle-Stirling. Silbert holds an MA in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center.