In 2004, Museum of Glass hosted an exhibition titled "Murano: Glass from the Olnick Spanu Collection," which, amongst other themes, explored the relationship between designer and maker. The Education Department asked, “Who could be a designer?”, and Kids Design Glass™ was born. The Kids Design Glass program provides children ages 12 and younger with the opportunity to create drawings and submit them to the Museum’s Hot Shop Team. Throughout the year, the Team selects individual designs to be brought to life as glass sculptures, to the child designer’s exact specifications. The Team creates two sculptures of each design – one for the designer to keep and one for the Museum’s Permanent Collection.
Over the past 20 years, we have made a lot of pieces! In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Kids Design Glass Program, the Museum has pulled together a selection of creatures from the program’s body of work featuring a range of critters from both this world and others, created by the minds of children over the past two decades. In "Earthlings and Extraterrestrials: 20 Years of Kids Design Glass," these pieces will be set in conversation with a collage of paintings and photographs which highlight the impact of climate change on our planet. As we celebrate the imaginations of the next generations of artists, designers, and creatives, we must also acknowledge the new challenges that they will face because of the Earth’s rapidly changing climate. In this exhibition, visitors will encounter open-ended questions to ponder about space, time, extinction, mutations, and how we can be better stewards of this planet that young artists call home.
Image sourced from event website.
