Glass museums: Exhibition design and spaces for contemporary glass art in the 'Glass Age'

This thesis investigates the art of exhibition design and spaces for glass art in the so-called 'Glass Age' with a particular focus on contemporary glass art exhibitions held in glass museums. As a phenomenon, the material of glass has both a real presence and a virtual presence, which makes it a medium of metaphor and individualises it as a versatile 'body of ambience.' By virtue of its 'phenomenal transparency,' glass is capable of exposing the structural elements of spaces and has experiential qualities, 'as a bearer of colour and multiplier of light' as the Expressionist writer Paul Scheerbart wrote in his Glass Architecture in 1914. Moreover, glass is also capable of manipulating 'perceptual spaces' due to its seeming immateriality. All this makes glass a versatile medium of art and design, especially that which benefits glass museums in the 'Glass Age'. This thesis likewise aims for a versatile approach while investigating contemporary glass art exhibitions in glass museums. The so-called contemporary glass art offers an immersive artistic environment and with usually illusionist effects. Based on this, it stands somewhere between being physical art objects and dematerialized art from the 1960s onwards and it has often been (and still is) exhibited in glass museums in the 'white cube' concept, which has been applied in the context of exhibition design ever since modern museology and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Since the beginning of the 21st century (in the so-called 'Glass Age'), however, a rapid transformation has been occurring in the current state of both contemporary glass art and exhibition design and spaces of glass museums, which have especially arisen under the intense influence of the New Media in our lives and thanks to the current technologies in glass. Accordingly, (1) absolute works of contemporary glass art have started to evolve into works of mixed-media art. (2) Glass art installations have started to evolve into digital and/or interactive media installations and architecturally involved works of art. (3) The 'black box' concept, and other multi-sensory approaches such as the 'total work of art' concept, are increasingly applied in glass museum spaces in the context of exhibition design to offer an overall experience of glass. By this means, glass with its peculiar properties has enabled a holistic convergence of art, architecture and technology through interdisciplinary approaches today in exhibition spaces, which comprise both physical and virtual spaces. In this thesis, therefore, conceptual, spatial and technical assessments of three evolved concepts of exhibition design for contemporary glass art ('white cube,' 'black box' and 'total work of art') and glass museums spaces in the Glass Age will be investigated comparatively between three of the world's foremost glass museums, namely the Corning Museum of Glass (U.S.A.), the Shanghai Museum of Glass (China) and the Swarovski Kristallwelten (Austria).