PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA.- The exhibition Contemporary Directions: Glass from the Maxine and William Block Collection just opened at the Carnegie Museum of Art, on view until July 7, 2002. 62 works created by Dale Chihuly, Maria Lugossy and more than 45 other artists between 1988 and 2001 are on view. This exhibition presents a unique introduction to studio glass through objects from an important and diverse collection assembled primarily in the last decade of the 20th century. Although a prized material for precious as well as functional objects since ancient times, glass was not a medium explored by individual artists in studio settings until the last half of the 20th century. The special facilities, materials and training required for glassmaking were found only in factories equipped for large-scale production.


Today, the formal concerns raised in discussions of contemporary art in general, such as the relationship of form, mass, proportion, and color, apply equally to glass. The exceptional size of some works parallels a broader interest among contemporary artists to explore and increase scale in their work. Humor, a quality often identified in contemporary art, is particularly apparent in this collection, as well as an interest in representation, ranging from landscape, to the human figure, and three-dimensional still lives of fruit and flowers.