Corning Museum of Glass

09/03/2026

If you’re planning one last beach day before summer ends, keep an eye out on the shoreline for sea glass! 🌊🔎🦀

Sea glass doesn’t just make a unique souvenir—it can offer a glimpse into the history and changing landscapes of the places where it’s found. 👀
 
Sea glass can be found on beaches around the world, from California to New England and even Puerto Rico. These colorful treasures often begin as discarded glass bottles, jars, and other objects that were once sent to local landfills or dumped near the shore. While many materials eventually decompose or wash away, glass can remain for decades, where the movement of the ocean, sand, and changing tides gradually smooth and tumble it into the pieces we find today. A chemical reaction with the saltwater also leaches minerals from the glass, giving sea glass its distinctive frosted, matte texture. ➡️

Chances are, you’ve collected a piece of sea glass before! Visit the Rakow Research Library to discover more about the history of sea glass, explore how artists use it in their work, and find resources to help you become a sea glass scavenger yourself. ➡️

Sea Glass of Puerto Rico: A Journey to Discover an Island’s Hidden Treasures takes readers on a sea glass-themed journey across Puerto Rico. Author Mary Beth Campanella maps out sea glass hotspots and shares tips for caring for and maintaining your finds, while also introducing readers to Puerto Rican culture, celebrations, cuisine, and social life.

New England Sea Glass: A Vibrant History explores the rocky shores, salty marshes, and historic harbors of New England. The book also includes advice for displaying and crafting with sea glass.

Sea Glass Hunter’s Handbook is a guide for both seasoned beachcombers and those just getting started. Learn about the origins of different types and colors of sea glass, discover beaches around the world where it can be found, and learn about Coastal Preservation and Antiquities Laws.

Sea Glass Seeker is a pocket-sized guide filled with tips for finding sea glass along different shorelines. From learning how to read the weather, tides, and environment to understanding how different conditions can affect your search, this gui

08/31/2026

What should our Hot Glass Team make this spooky season?! 🎃👀
 
The Great Glass Pumpkin Experiment returns September 12! 🤭💫🎉👻
 
A favorite fall tradition at Corning Museum of Glass, the Great Glass Pumpkin Experiment is a 90-minute live hot glass demonstration where our Hot Glass Team lets their imaginations run wild. Expect ghostly gourds, spooky themes, and more than a few unexpected surprises. 👻🔥
 
Saturdays, 10:00-11:30 AM 🎃
September 12 through October 31 📆

Join us this fall, you won’t want to miss it! 🍂 What should the team make this year?

🎃

08/28/2026

At first glance, ‘Virtue of Blue’ looks like a swarm of butterflies suspended in midair. Look closer, and you'll notice that those butterflies are actually made from solar cells, transforming a piece of technology into something unexpected.

Our Teen Leadership Council selected this work as one of their favorites because of the creative way it connects nature and innovation. Butterflies rely on energy from the sun to take flight, while solar cells capture that same energy to power our world.

By bringing these elements together, the artist invites us to think about how nature and technology can work hand in hand.

Jeroen Verhoeven, Dutch, b. 1976, 2016.3.8

08/18/2026

How does one conserve a glass object that’s shattered into more than 400 pieces? Our new Glass Conservation Intern, Carson, is finding out! 
 
Carson joins us from Ecole de Condé in Paris and her first project is documenting this highly fragmentary glass object excavated from Fustat, near Cairo, Egypt, during a 1967 archaeological dig. The pieces are so delicate that they are paper-thin in places. Before conservation treatment can begin, each fragment needs to be individually laid out and photographed. The next step will be sorting the glass by color, because we suspect this may be more than one object.
 
Stay tuned as Carson works to bring this object one step closer to being reassembled. We’ll be sharing an update once it’s finished!

08/13/2026

The learning never stops at CMoG! You know that colorful shine you see on ancient glass? 🌈 It’s not decoration, it’s actually a sign of deterioration! 

During a recent volunteer training, our team met with Conservator Astrid van Giffen to learn what happens to glass in the ground. As water and minerals interact with buried glass, the glass surface transforms into hundreds of ultra-thin layers, changing how it interacts with light and creating the rainbow-like iridescence we often see on archaeological objects.

That colorful shimmer is actually a form of weathering, which is glass deterioration that happens in the ground. Different areas of the same object can weather in different ways, creating a variety of colors and textures across a single fragment.

These ongoing training sessions help equip our volunteers with deeper knowledge of our collection so they can bring even more stories, science, and discoveries to every visitor experience. 💙✨

08/10/2026

Last week, we had some very good visitors. 🐶

It was such a delight to host Guiding Eyes for the Blind So Tier NY Puppy Raising Region and their puppies in training as they explored the Museum. Exposure to different sights, sounds, and experiences helps prepare these future guide dogs for the important work ahead, and we’re so grateful to support that mission.

Thank you to Guiding Eyes for letting us be part of the learning experience. ❤️ And good luck to all the pups in training 🐾

08/07/2026