a.k.a. V.J.

Back in 1980, my sixth-grade class took a field trip to the Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG). I wasn’t all that excited about the museum going into it, but I saw a few things there that made an impression on my young mind, including a shard of glass dating back to ancient Egypt. My final takeaway was that a museum devoted to glass was a lot cooler than it sounded.

Despite having that positive, early impression of CMoG, I went a full 44 years without ever going back. Corning, tucked away deep in New York’s Southern Tier, is a bit of a hike from where I live — over 2 hours by car — and it’s not really near or on the way to anything else. So, a trip to Corning involves overcoming a considerable amount of inertia.

Inertia was finally overcome this weekend when the family made the scenic trek down through the Finger Lakes region to the Crystal City. It was worth the drive. CMoG is a museum that has a lot to offer adults, and the 56-year-old me probably appreciated it more than did the 11-year-old me. Its exhibits run the range from exquisite objets d’art to mass-produced cookware; from artifacts of the ancient world to artwork created for a Netflix reality show.

We spent a few hours at CMoG, and Jen captured many of the exhibits with her camera. Here are just a few of the many, many shots she took.

The highlight of the visit was the live glass-making exhibition in which a couple of staffers produce a piece from scratch and narrate all the steps along the way. It gave me a good appreciation of the skill and patience required in the process.