The Corning Museum of Glass is located in Corning, New York, a small city in the Southern Tier of New York near the Pennsylvania border. Corning is a logical home for the Corning Museum of Glass, as it is the home of Corning Incorporated (formerly Corning Glass Works), who have been known for over a century as a leading manufacturer of glass and ceramic items.

The Corning Museum of Glass was first opened in 1950, and was intended to simply be an educational institution. It housed a huge library of books and other works on glass, as well as a growing collection of glass objects. Since that time, though, it has become much more. It is now one of the most exciting and dynamic interactive museums in the world.

The collection of glass objects is a showcase of glass from ancient times to the present day. In the collection are things like an ancient Egyptian glass necklace, a 4th century Eastern Mediterranean cosmetic tube, a gilded Venetian Renaissance goblet, a Mechanical Glass Theatre from mid-18th Century France (the only moving one of its kind in the world), a 2000 year old Chinese ritual disk (bi), a giant Tiffany window with an image of a Hudson River Landscape, a Frank Lloyd Wright stained-glass window, and thousands more. The collection also contains hundreds of modern glass pieces by well-known artists, as well as many functional and scientific glass objects, such as early lightbulbs and huge telescope lenses.

What makes the Corning Glass Museum such a cool place for families to visit, though, are the interactive exhibits. At the museum, you can work with an expert to make your own glass in a variety of fashions: hot glassworking, flameworking, sandblasting, and more! It sounds dangerous, but the expert glassmakers at the museum are incredibly well-trained and know how to keep you safe while letting you have all sorts of fun with glassmaking!

The museum also regularly offers live glassmaking shows, where you can watch expert glass artists perform highly advanced glassmaking techniques. Additionally, the museum offers other special events, from concerts to lectures.

For more information about visiting the Corning Museum of Glass, visit cmog.org!