Museum of Glass: "Hot glass. Cool art."

Museum of Glass
"Hot glass. Cool art."

"All glass, all the time. Housed in a striking building distinguished by its iconic 90-foot-high cone, the Museum of Glass features ongoing glassblowing demonstrations in the Hot Shop Amphitheater, where visitors learn about the creative challenges of working with molten glass. The 13,000 square feet of gallery space is dedicated to changing exhibitions of works executed in glass. A hands-on art studio is available for visitors...."
(From the about page.)

They're in Tacoma, Washington.

Looks like a great place. The website has live streaming video of the Museum of Glass hot shop - which obviously isn't available when the shop isn't open. Live streaming video.

The link labeled "virtual museum" on the home page isn't. I mean, the page it leads to is more a description of what the Museum of Glass is, where it is, and why it's so cool. Still, the photos are nice.

Most of what I saw on the website was attractive, well-written, and well-designed. Then, on a page about the history of the museum, I found this:

"Warning: include(/includes/store-rotator.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/museumof/public_html/about-mog/history/index.php on line 98...."

here were five more, pretty much like this. Apparently something was wrong with lines 98, 100, and 102 of either software the web designer was using, or of a data set. (I checked the page's source code: it's an ordinary text document, with HTML tags and all - I'm surprised nobody spotted those 'warning' messages.)

Don't get me wrong: It's a beautiful website, other than that.

I think glass art is one of the more striking examples of technology and creativity interacting. Glass is a very practical substance: here in Minnesota, it allows my household to maintain fairly comfortable temperature levels inside winter and summer, while still having light and a view outside.

It's used to make light bulbs, lenses, and bottles.

And with a little tweaking, it can be used to make beautiful sculptures.

I'd like to see the Museum of Glass myself, in person: but meanwhile I'll settle for visiting the website.