Sand, Ash, Heat

The New Orleans Museum of Art presents the first ever thorough look at the institution’s extensive collection of glass objects ranging from tiny ancient Egyptian amulets to large-scale works of contemporary sculpture. On view now, Sand, Ash, Heat: Glass at the New Orleans Museum of Art explores how a common material has inspired innovation in the arts and sciences for millennia.

“A comprehensive historic glass collection comprises one of the hallmark areas of NOMA’s important holdings in decorative arts and design. Sand, Ash, Heat proposes a unique interpretive lens to consider these objects alongside works in other parts of NOMA’s collection,” said Susan M. Taylor, The Montine McDaniel Freeman Director of NOMA. “The exhibition demonstrates how we might use one ubiquitous material as a case study to examine a much broader history of human creativity across time and place.”

In presenting glass artistry and production from prehistory to present day, Sand, Ash, Heat foregrounds how glass is connected to histories of scientific discovery, foodways, cultural exchange, and artistic innovation. 

The exhibition includes a focus on the legacy of glass-making on the Venetian island of Murano, which since the 13th century has been at the center of a broad network of international glass exchange. With a debt to ancient Roman glass and to technologies perfected in Syria and Egypt, Venetian glass set the European standard for fine tableware emulated by glassmakers around the world.

Sand, Ash, Heat also features standout examples of “art glass” from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when artists began to look at glass in a new way. At that time, makers shifted from considering the function and decoration of glass to manipulating the material’s color and form to express ideas and artistic visions. Examples from Louis Comfort Tiffany, René Lalique, the Wiener Werkstätte, and others show how glass was an important part of the Art Nouveau style, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and other artistic advances of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Additionally, key figures in the 20th-century American studio craft movement from New Orleans and beyond demonstrate how artist communities formed around glassmaking. And works by modern and contemporary artists, including Christopher Wilmarth, Lynda Benglis, and Olafur Eliasson, demonstrate the possibilities of glass to convey ideas and effect sensory experiences.

Today, artists continue to reference and update these traditions through their own experiments with glass, including a monumental black glass chandelier by Fred Wilson that highlights worldwide cultural exchange and a new work by Sharif Bey, the latest in a series of commissions inspired by NOMA’s historic holdings in decorative arts and design. 

“This exhibition shows glass in its full complexity—rare or common, delicate or powerful. At all moments of human artistic and scientific achievement, glass was there,” said Mel Buchanan, NOMA’s RosaMary Curator of Decorative Arts and Design. “Glass lenses improved human sight and allowed us to explore the solar system; advancements in glass architecture can be seen in both Gothic cathedrals and modern skyscrapers; and today’s glass phone screens and glass fiber-optic networks connect our world at a speed we could not have imagined even thirty years ago. Even a modest wine bottle and the glasses used to toast a loved one’s accomplishments are part of that shared human history in glass.”

Sand, Ash, Heat is a significant contribution to understanding and sharing NOMA’s permanent collection, which includes nearly 5,000 works of glass. In the 1950s, railroad executive Melvin P. Billups donated his superb collection to the museum, honoring his wife in her hometown of New Orleans. The Billups historic glass collection forms the throughline for this exhibition and accompanying catalogue.

More information about the exhibition and related programming is available at noma.org.