Dale Chihuly

Dale Chihuly was introduced to glass while studying interior design at the University of Washington.
After graduating in 1965, Chihuly enrolled in the first glass program in the country, at the University
of Wisconsin. He continued his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he later
established the glass program and taught for more than a decade. I n 1968, after receiving a
Fulbright Fellowship, he went to work at the Venini glass factory in Venice. There he observed the
team approach to blowing glass, which is critical to the way he works today. In 1971, Chihuly
cofounded Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State. With this international glass center, Chihuly
has led the avant-garde in the development of glass as a fine art. His work is included in more than
200 museum collections worldwide. He has been the recipient of many awards, including two
fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and thirteen honorary doctorates.

Chihuly has created more than a dozen well-known series of works, among them Cylinders and
Baskets in the 1970s; Seaforms, Macchia, Persians, and Venetians in the 1980s; Niijima Floats and
Chandeliers in the 1990s; and Fiori, Glass on Glass, and Rotolo in the 2000s. He is also celebrated
for large architectural installations. In 1986, he was honored with a solo exhibition, Dale Chihuly:
Objets de Verre, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Palais du Louvre, in Paris. In 1995, he began
Chihuly Over Venice, for which he created sculptures at glass factories in Finland, Ireland, and
Mexico, then installed them over the canals and piazzas of Venice. In 1999, Chihuly started an
ambitious exhibition, Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem; more than 1 million visitors attended the
Tower of David Museum to view his installations. In 2001, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
curated the exhibition Chihuly at the V&A.

His lifelong fascination for glass houses has grown into a series of exhibitions within botanical
settings. The Garden Cycle began in 2001 at the Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago, and
continued at several locations, among them the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London, in 2005
and 2019; the New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, in 2006and 2017; and Gardens by the Bay,
Singapore, in 2021. Chihuly has shown his work in solo exhibitions at museums including the de
Young Museum, San Francisco, in 2008; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2011; Virginia Museum of
Fine Arts, Richmond, in2012; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, in 2013; Royal Ontario Museum,
Toronto, in 2016; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, in 2017;
Groninger Museum, Groningen, the Netherlands, in 2018; and Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum,
Naples, Florida, in 2020. Chihuly Garden and Glass, a major long-term exhibition, opened in Seattle
in 2012.