Jeff, Cameron and I had a wonderful time seeing the Chihully Stained Glass Exhibit during its last week in Montreal in October. We went on the last Wednesday of the exhibit, half price night so only $10 or so each instead of $25. We discovered half of Montreal had the same idea about going on the half price night so the line outside went for almost a block! But it was well worth the hour or so wait.
This exhibit, from June 8 to Oct. 20, 2014, was the most successful exhibit in the past 15 years at the museum with 277,000 people visiting it. (See article at this link:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Montreal+Museum+Fine+Arts+hopes+keep/9268003/story.htm
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| The line to get into the exhibit. Jeff and Cameron at the end. |
When you get to the stop of the stair case and look back, this is what you see:
Here are close-ups of the "Persians".
I was interested to see that Chihuly got his start with the help of a Fulbright Fellowship in 1968.
This piece was like a forest of blue glass with a base that reminded me of redwood.
I did the audio tour of the exhibit and was interested to hear that Chihuly doesn't make his own glass. Rather, he designs all the art and has many glass blowers working with him to create the glass that he has designed. I remember the description of the blue glass forest also talked about how there was only one particular factory (maybe in Eastern Europe?) where glass-blown tubes as long as these could be made.
Next came the Perian Ceiling which was just amazing. Here's some background:
Here's a video clip that gives the whole effect which was mesmerizing in the depth of color. Even the shadows cast colors on the wall. It feels like the room is bathed in color by the light shining through the glass in the ceiling.
Next came the room that looked like Christmas trees (some upright, some hanging from the ceiling), all made of glass.)
The next room was like entering the solar system with certain corners lit up with balls of brilliant color, and with a garden of glass in the middle. It looked like another planet with the darkness surrounding the glowing glass just enhancing that effect.
The audio tour discussed how Chihuly became fascinated with how his glass balls of color looked in boats. I think there was a story about how they were literally put in a boat once and were so beautiful that he decided to have this be one of his regular themes.
I loved how he used a black reflective floor creating an amazing mirror effect with every glass object on the floor.
This room of neon rods was a little unnerving, but interesting for a short visit.
The final room was filed with this undulating bowl shapes of incredible color, sometimes with the inside and outside being rich contrasting colors.
The exhibit looped back to the blue glass forest and the amazing staircase.
The exhibit was breath-taking, but we were glad to leave the crowds.
This last photo is of a piece called The Sun which stood outside the Museum of Fine Arts enticing people to come to the exhibit. The sun is composed of 120,000 pieces of glass and spans 5 meters. The Museum is now trying to do a fundraising campaign to try to purchase The Sun for its permanent exhibit. (See article linked to at the start of this blog entry.) They need to raise at least $500,000.
