Desert Botanical Garden - Phoenix AZ - Glass Art
July 4, 2008 – 2:07 amBrowse Travel by Destination at Luxury Link
Desert Botanical Garden to display glass art
Glass is coming to the desert.
The Desert Botanical Garden announced today that in November it will be opening an installation of the glass art of Dale Chihuly.
Chihuly, whose Seattle studio is a factory of glass art, will bring five flatbed truckloads of glass to the garden to assemble along the outdoor paths of the garden.
“In the garden world, Chihuly is the hottest thing there is,” said Ken Schutz, executive director of the Desert Botanical Garden in Papago Park.
The exhibit opens Nov. 22 and continues through May 31, 2009.
Chihuly, among the most popular contemporary artists in any medium, appeals to both the connoisseur and the popular audience and is often credited with creating a resurgent market in art glass.
This will be Chihuly’s eighth show specifically designed for a public garden. Previous installations have appeared at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami, and most recently at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh.
“He shows so well in gardens because much of his art is organically inspired in shape and color,” Schutz said.
Chihuly’s work has been a strong draw elsewhere, Schutz said, and Schutz hoped it would do the same in Phoenix.
“This is the biggest, most elaborate art show the garden has ever done,” he said.
In Missouri, a similar Chihuly show increased that garden’s visitorship and membership significantly, said Peggy Lents, vice president of communications there.
“And the buzz about us in the community grew,” she said. “It gave us an opportunity to bring a plethora of new people to the museum. It brought us people who wouldn’t have thought they would enjoy a garden visit and who said things like ‘I haven’t been to a garden since my third-grade field trip; I love it.’
Chihuly’s art is owned by more than 200 museums worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Smithsonian Institution.
In the Valley, his work is in the collections of the Phoenix Art Museum and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.
The most recent large exhibition of Chihuly’s work was at the Phoenix Art Museum in 2002.
Before that, a major exhibition of his work was held at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts in 1996.
This exhibition is different because it is outdoors.
“Gardens have a long tradition of art,” said Elaine McGinn, director of planning and exhibits for the Desert Botanical Garden, “but that is usually bronze or marble. What’s exciting for us is that this is a different kind of art to put into an outdoor space.”
Representatives of Chihuly’s studio have been to the garden twice, to make photographs of the spaces in order to plan the exhibit.
“Dale has had a love of gardens since he was young and loved his mother’s garden,” said Janet Makela, spokeswoman for the Chihuly Studio. “He has an affinity for gardens and has enjoyed pairing his work with gardens and in greenhouses and likes the symbiotic relationship between the botanicals and the art, paired together.”
The exhibit was arranged by Chihuly Studio and not curated by the Desert Botanical Garden staff; the garden declined to say how much it cost.
The admission for the garden will increase from $10 for adults to $15 during the run of the show, and tickets will be sold for specific entry times.
“The price of the show was a significant amount and increasing the admission price commensurately makes the exhibit possible,” Schutz said.
“We’ve done a lot of internal thinking about the garden and its role in the community.
“First and foremost, it’s a living museum of plants from around the world, but we also want to find new ways for old friends to engage with the garden and for new friends to come and engage with the plants and make a long-term connection with us.”
