TOLEDO, OHIO.- The Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) has named Beth Lipman as the 53rd Guest Artist Pavilion Project (GAPP) Artist in Residence. The Wisconsin-based artist, who works primarily in colorless clear glass, will visit TMA Dec. 7-16 to create new work and share her process. On Dec. 9 at 7 p.m., she will give a talk on her studio practice and anticipated work in ReGift, an exhibition opening at the Toledo Museum of Art in summer 2023. The site-specific glass installation investigates the life of Florence Scott Libbey.

"What is special about having Beth as a GAPP artist is that she is coming, in part, to make work for this site-specific installation, which is not typically the focus of the GAPP artists,” said Diane Wright, TMA’s senior curator of glass and contemporary craft. “She is simultaneously moving forward an objective to support experimentation in glass through a commissioned work, while connecting us to our history through the subject matter.”

GAPP brings the world’s most influential and up-and-coming glass artists to Toledo. The program aligns with the Museum’s educational mission and its aim to promote dialogue in contemporary glass and contemporary art communities. A committee of TMA staff members, including the deputy director, curator of glass, director of collections and glass studio manager, select the GAPP Artist in Residence.

Lipman (American, b. 1971) draws inspiration for her sculptural practice from the still lifes of the late 1500s and early 1600s. Those works represent moments of splendor and excess of human impact on the natural world. Her sculptural processes become analogies for life cycles, pointing to systems both natural and human that must continually adapt to survive.




Both her mother and grandmother were artists. Lipman discovered the medium of glass as a teenager and enjoys the material’s beauty and fragility. Much like life, she views glass as a precious and imperfect material that shatters easily. Her compositions often feature an array of everyday items, such as plates, food and pitchers, that capture a fleeting moment in time. Each item made from colorless glass, Lipman’s work invites viewers to concentrate on the details.

Lipman has exhibited her work internationally at renowned institutions such as the Ringling Museum of Art (Sarasota, Fla.), RISD Museum (Providence, R.I.), Gustavsbergs Konsthall (Gustavsberg, Sweden) and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.).

Her work has been acquired by numerous museums including the Brooklyn Museum of Art (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.), Jewish Museum (New York) and the Corning Museum of Glass (Corning, N.Y.), among others.

Lipman has received numerous awards including a USA Berman Bloch Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Grant, Virginia A. Groot Foundation Grant and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Alturas Foundation, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center’s Arts/Industry Program and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. Recent works include Living History, a large-scale site-specific commission for the Wichita Art Museum (Wichita, Kan.) that investigates the nature of time and place, and Belonging(s), a sculptural response to the life of Abigail Levy Franks for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, Ark.).

The artist is represented by Nohra Haime Gallery (New York), Cade Tompkins Projects (Providence, R.I.) and Ferrin Contem

The Toledo Museum of Art is a nonprofit arts institution funded through individual donations, foundation grants, corporate sponsorships and investments.