The Whiteness of Glass, New Glass Review by Corning Museum of Glass, 2020
The Whiteness of Glass is a creative essay commissioned by Susie Silbert, Curator of Postwar and Contemporary Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass for New Glass Review. From the text: “In May 2020, amidst a global pandemic and months of quarantine, we watched the brutal death of George Floyd while in police custody sparking nationwide protests, calls to defund the police, and the toppling of confederate monuments across the United States. Inboxes flooded with public statements from companies and organizations that openly acknowledged histories of systemic racism with promises to their constituencies they were committed to anti-racism. More than once, a photograph of one of our collective members was used to model a glass institution or organization’s commitment to equity without his notification or consideration that to use the image of a Black person’s body to prove your commitment to equity to a largely white audience and funding base might require the courtesy of consent, if not payment.
The current state of the field is grim, but it always has been. The Whiteness of Glass emerged from a cursory assessment of demographic data because we asked ourselves how bad is it? This data reveals a field that has failed to address issues of structural racism at all levels and across all aspects of the glass arts sector. This failure to confront systemic barriers to access and retention for Black artists and other people of color including intersectional feminism is all of our responsibility. While this concern is not unique to the glass field and is indicative of the problems facing the broader arts sector, it is amplified within this microcosm. The consequences if not addressed will be our own undoing. Your inaction damns us all.
While everyone has a role to play in unravelling systemic racism, leading institutions in the field have a higher burden of work to do and we will be looking to you to lead the way. Organizations such as Pilchuck Glass School, Corning Museum of Glass, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Penland School of Crafts, Rhode Island School of Design, Alfred School of Art and Design, Rochester Institute of Technology, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Temple School of Art and Architecture have access to a greater level of resources and capacity than independent artists, students, adjunct faculty, contractors, or small organizations. Tearing down institutional racism and reimagining a new world will take us all, but it requires more than a statement of solidarity. Black artists and other people of color will not do this work for you, but we leave you with these reflections, adapted from No Matter The Intentions (2017), as a starting point:”
