“Tough Stuff emerged out of a desire to open a new door into the multifaceted histories of glass in the United States,” said Tami Landis, Curator of Postwar and Contemporary Glass at CMOG. “The exhibition is grounded in conversations with artists about their experiences and challenges in developing their own studios and signature styles.”
American art of the 1960s was characterized by both material and conceptual innovation. This period of transformation redefined glass as a serious artistic medium and laid the groundwork for what became known as the Studio Glass Movement. While scholarship has often framed this movement around a narrow lineage of male artists, the reality was far broader; artists of both genders across disciplines, regions, and backgrounds were advancing the medium through diverse techniques and creative inquiry. Women played a central yet often overlooked role individually and collectively, which Tough Stuff brings into sharper focus. By highlighting works from the 1960s through today, the exhibition explores the history of studio glass through these women artists’ stories, acknowledging their persistence, ingenuity, and influence while expanding the historical narrative to reflect a richer, more inclusive vision.
Visitors will explore never-before-displayed works from CMoG’s permanent collection and the Rakow Research Library, along with notable loans from many of the featured artists. Together, the featured works will showcase both a wide breadth of techniques and illuminates the broader social, cultural, artistic, and gender politics of the time that impacted female artists.
Complementing and continuing the work of Tough Stuff into the future, the Museum’s Rakow Research Library’s robust Oral History initiative will make the first-person accounts of many of the still-living artists from this period available to the public. The living archive will feature oral histories, interviews, video, photography, archival ephemera, and more, holding a record of these artists’ voices transmitting their own histories to future generations of glassmakers and glass enthusiasts.
