October 28, 2015 Tacoma, Washington

We went to Tacoma today to view a couple museums. Tacoma is only a 15 minute drive from where we are.

The Chihuly Bridge of Glass spans I-705 between the Museum of Glass and Union Station.  It has three installations. The Venetian Wall, part of which is in the first photo, showcases 109 delicate Chihuly sculptures. Two  translucent  ice-blue Crystal Towers rise 40 feet above the bridge’s midpoint. Between the Crystal Towers you can see the top of the hot shop of the Museum of glass.

The third feature is the ceiling of the Seafoam Pavilion which suspends more than 2,300 colorful glass objects above the heads of pedestrians. Union Station was built in 1911 and functioned as a train station until the early 1980’s. It is now the federal courthouse, but inside there are Chihuly installations. This is the dome of union station with the glass chandelier and  another huge piece in the arch.

Orange glass flowers adorn the  half moon-shaped Monarch Window on the second floor. Through the window you can see the top of the hot shop and the Crystal towers on the bridge. In front of the Museum of Glass is the  Martin Blanks “Fluent Steps” in a 210 foot reflecting pool. 754 individually hand–sculpted pieces of glass form several islands of clear-glass sculpture. One grouping resembles mist rising from a meadow and another appears as a cascading water fall.  The  museum has a 90 foot high cone sheathed in diamond-shaped stainless steel tiles. I am sure on a clear sunny day all these glass sculptures would look even better.

Inside the lobby is this huge piece of painted glass.  Inside the dome is the hot shop. It has an expert Hot Shop team that works with visiting artists. There are about 40 visiting artists a year. The Museum of Glass has one of the  largest museum residency programs in the US.  As part of the residency  the artists donate one of their pieces to the museum.

 

The museum is devoted to changing exhibitions of contemporary and frequently edgy works executed in glass.  The birds and the flower are made by Joey Kirkpatrick and Flora C Mace.  The raven is made out of wood, the blue jay is on the side of a glass vessel and the flowers are real flowers suspended in a glass resin. The other pieces  are some of Chihuly’s venetian pieces.

The kitty is part of the  exhibit of pieces made from drawings by children. The pumpkins and penguin are in the gift shop. The next museum is the Lemay America’s car museum.  It is a 4 level 165,000 square foot building which showcases hundreds of cars spanning the more than 100 history of cars. Also is a photo of Tacoma from the top floor of the museum.

This is the top level with the muscle cars. You view each floor, then walk down ramps on one side with more exhibits and then from the bottom you walk up ramps with more exhibits to where you started. It is an amazing place. The top photo are glass hood ornaments that were made in the Museum of Glass, below is a flag made from tiny cars.

Harold Lamay started out with  a chain of garages called Lucky’s.  He had 3,000 cars in his collection. He is pictured here with his wife. Here are some of the cars. He donated 300 to this museum, there are another 500 in another museum-we didn’t go to that one , and there are about 300 at his house. I was in overload with all the cars. The yellow car is a solar car.