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This is glass country and Dale Chihuly is king. The renowned artist whose prodigious energy and charisma spawned the Northwest's art glass culture actually lives in nearby Seattle, but he was born in Tacoma and the city wants everyone to know it.
At the hub of Tacoma's downtown redevelopment district, the federal courthouse boasts a Chihuly chandelier in its dome and displays his glass sculpture in massive arched windows. Next door, the Tacoma Art Museum is building a new home that will include a permanent exhibition space for its collection of Chihuly glass. Not to be left out, the Washington State History Museum--on the opposite side of the courthouse--offers another view of the artist: an exhibition from his vast collection of American Indian trade blankets.
And now comes the Bridge of Glass--a $6.8-million, publicly funded pedestrian bridge that opened Saturday. Billed as a gateway to Tacoma, the 500-foot-long, 20-foot-wide bridge spans Interstate 705, connecting Pacific Avenue's burgeoning cultural corridor to Tacoma's waterfront. Not incidentally, it's also an outdoor gallery of Chihuly's work, featuring two 40-foot towers of giant blue crystals, a walk-through pavilion with a ceiling of 1,500 glass "Seaforms" and a wall of 109 Venetian-style vessels displayed on glass-encased shelves. Arthur Andersson, of Andersson-Wise Architects in Austin, Texas, designed the bridge in collaboration with Chihuly.
Spectacular as the bridge may be, it leads to a much bigger temple of glass--which also opened Saturday--conceived as the anchor of an ambitious plan to convert deserted industrial property along Thea Foss Waterway into a thriving cultural and residential center. Here's the surprise: The new institution was originally envisioned as a Chihuly-driven glass production and exhibition center, but it has opened with a much broader mission.
Neither named for Chihuly nor devoted to his work, the Museum of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art is "dedicated to the presentation and interpretation of contemporary art with a sustained concentration on the medium of glass." Designed by Canadian architect Arthur Erickson, the $48-million building--built on city land, mostly with private funds--is an exhibition and education center intended to involve artists of many different persuasions.
A 90-foot-tall tilted cone, sheathed in diamond shapes of stainless steel, towers above the three-story building. Inspired by the timber industry's wood burners that once...