CORNING, NY.- The Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG) will celebrate the public opening of a site-specific installation by acclaimed artist and architect Maya Lin. Opening October 2025, the work, part of the artist’s ongoing series Marble River Drawing, will be a visual interpretation of the four main rivers that converge within the region and in the town of Corning, New York. The commissioned work is made possible through the Ennion Acquisitions Fund, fueled by support from CMoG’s Ennion membership. Ennion serves as CMoG’s philanthropic backbone, and contributions from this group are instrumental in growing the Museum’s world-class collection, organizing groundbreaking scholarly exhibitions, and creating innovative educational programs.

The installation aligns with the 10th anniversary of CMoG’s Contemporary Art + Design Galleries, and the commissioned piece will engage directly with the architecture of the Thomas Phifer and Associates building that opened in 2015. The work, title pending, will represent the topographical footprint of the four main rivers of the region around Corning: the Chemung, Tioga, Cohocton, and Canisteo rivers. These waterways have been crucial to the history of the town and even the origins of Corning, Incorporated, which moved its glassworks from Brooklyn by barge in 1868 to its current eponymous home.

“Lin’s marble river drawings are incredibly meaningful for how they activate site and space to the local environment, while also being responsive to the wider emotional and social conditions of humanity,” said Tami Landis, CMoG’s Curator of Postwar and Contemporary Glass. “We are thrilled to be able to commission Lin to create one of these impactful glass installations that connects directly to our local landscape. As we celebrate and reflect on the past ten years in contemporary glass, adding this dynamic work to the collection celebrates the range of approaches artists are championing in the material today.”

“It’s an honor to expand my series of glass river systems through this commission for the Corning Museum of Glass and to highlight the waterways surrounding the world’s most significant glass collection,” said Lin. “Waterways have a kind of magic—we rarely see them as unified systems. Instead, we tend to focus on the stretch of river we know. But when you step back and take in the whole, these living systems reveal themselves as singular, interconnected entities, each with its own personality. That’s the essence of what waterways truly are.”

The Lin installation is comprised of #475 Johns Mansville glass marbles, which are meaningful on two levels—connecting to both the history of studio glass and Maya Lin's childhood. Her father, Henry Huan Lin, was a ceramicist and Dean of Fine Arts at Ohio University, who played a role in the early studio glass movement by inviting artists to experiment with glass. One day, Lin’s father brought home a box of these clear industrially produced marbles to the young artist’s delight. She recalled that it was "like opening a box of water" due to the play of light on the marbles, similar to light dancing on the surface of water. Lin’s river installations revisit this childhood wonder, using the ethereal nature of glass to represent the movement and character of water.

Each year, a significant piece is acquired by the Corning Museum of Glass with the support of the Ennion Acquisitions Fund, enabling a meaningful expansion of the scope and diversity of the Museum’s permanent collection. The Lin commission will be introduced to the Ennion donors who helped make it possible at a private event on Thursday, October 9, during which the artist will be present and make remarks.

Maya Lin (b. 1959) is known for her large-scale environmental artworks, architectural works, and memorial designs. Lin was thrust into the spotlight when, as a senior at Yale University, she submitted the winning design in a national competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to be built in Washington, D.C. (completed in 1982). She has enjoyed a remarkable career in art and architecture, exploring how we experience and relate to landscape as well as environmental considerations of sustainability. Her interest in landscape has led to works influenced by topography and geographic phenomena. Her artwork has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide, with works in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art; The Smithsonian Institution; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; and the California Academy of Sciences, among others. Her architectural projects include the Neilson Library (2021) at Smith College, the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Cambridge Campus (2015) in Massachusetts, the Museum for Chinese in America (2009) in New York City, and the Riggio-Lynch Interfaith Chapel (2004) and Langston Hughes Library (1999) in Clinton, Tennessee.

Lin was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence, in 2009, and in 2016, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for creating a sacred place of healing in the nation’s capital.