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World
Travel •
Destinations |
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Dreamscapes Two •
More Fiction |
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PEOPLE
IN GLASS HOUSES - From Our Archives
•
Sam North
visits the new Museum of Glass in Tacoma
Tacoma
and Mt Rainer
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Take the T and A away from Ta-coma and you’ll get a pretty
accurate name for what passes for this city on a Saturday morning.
Driving in at 11am last Saturday was like arriving for your aunt’s
funeral a week late. Not a bird sang, not a person stirred, it
was like a scene from ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’
complete with crazy person running from street to street shouting
‘they’re coming, they’re coming’. Well hell,
I was, but when I inspected my mirror, I was the only one in town.
If I’d had a gun I would have checked to see if it was loaded.
|
The famous Beaux
Arts Rialto. Photo: Sam North |
| You’ll
also be in luck because this is the beginning of Antique Row on
Seventh Avenue and there’s a lot to see here. Now if you travel
as much as myself, you’ll know that when you get ‘Antique
Rows’ it’s a sign that the town is either dead, dying
or about to undergo revitalisation. It is always one of the above. |
Window from Former Tacoma Mansion
Photo: Sam North |
The Tacoma Mouse on Antique
Row
Photo: Sam North
|
The rents are
low; the spaces huge and full of character and the people, when
they deign to come out of hiding are friendly, but shy and unfashionably
honest. The best place to start is probably the auction house Sanford
and Son (auctions Wednesdays at 7pm). It’s a cornucopia of
eclectic pieces, genuine 30’s and earlier oak and walnut cupboards
and chairs and some enormous wonderful glass windows taken from
the mansions that have sadly been torn down. You can see they were
very grand homes indeed and that’s Tacoma’s tragedy. People
are also very honest here; they leave money under the paperweights
if there’s no one around. There are rows of places with collectibles
what can be best described as ‘junktiques’, but it all
has a price and even if it’s lunch boxes, someone is collecting
them.
Tacoma is absolutely dead, nowhere deader and that includes Boksburg
on a Sunday. I am assured it is a thriving metropolis on weekdays,
but the very absence of a Starbucks on any corner, let alone every
corner, tells the real truth. (OK I exagerate, there are two Starbucks
but one was closed). So who is to blame for this? Tacoma isn’t
on the ‘tour’ list and so you’ll miss the wonderful
Beaux Arts wedding cake ‘Rialto’ building that must have
started life as a movie theatre in 1918 but now houses the Youth
Symphony and Ballet Company. You’ll also miss the wonderful
Pantages Theatre on Broadway where well respected Tacoma Opera and
Symphony play, also built in 1918. *Strangely
enough this last August, Elton John played the Tacoma Dome, which
is either a comment on his career or he knows Tacoma could do with
some help.
Tacoma has made quite a few town planning mistakes in it’s
past. The major one being the building of a complex highway system
that completely cuts the city off from Commencement Bay and Thea
Foss Waterway. Unlike Vancouver, there are no homes neatly terraced
down the slopes to the water on the city side and more’s the
pity. It’s strictly business downtown and since everyone on
the west coast seems to quit at four and head on home to the ‘burbs,
the bars, cafes, and hotels that would serve city residents don’t
need to exist. There is a 319 room Sheraton and a 90 room Silver
Cloud Inn, but precious little else. In fact people don’t appear
to live in the city at all. The lack of corner shops, cafes, boutiques
is testimony to a lost time. Everything has moved to the out of
town mall and the people gone with them. |
|
WHICH BRINGS US TO THE MUSEUM
OF GLASS |
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The Museum of Glass
View from the waterfront
Photo: Sam North |
|
The
Chihuly Venetian Wall- Photo: S.N. |
The Bridge
of Glass
|
The
bridge is 500 feet long and at the other end is the Museum itself.
The 90-foot high stainless steel conical form at a 17-degree angle
hints at the old wood burners that used to signify the old sawmills
of a generation ago
.
You reach the entrance via shallow concrete steps that sweep you
passed a water bed of glass Chihuly baubles and before it some clear
glass weather vanes. Finally you reach a strange Alice in Wonderland
view of cane teapot, cup and saucer. These are huge and amusing
and set you up for the museum well. |
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|
Inside
there is vast airport space with a smaller gallery space on
the right, a shop, petite café and ‘Hot Shop Amphitheatre’
where you can watch glass artists working with big-screen
close ups via CCTV.
If at first one is impressed by the space, there really does
seem to be an anomaly here. The gallery space is wholly underwhelming
with a current exhibit of sketches by some European glass
artists and a few, very few samples of glasswork. It is with
total surprise you realise that this is it. Something isn’t
working here. A Museum of Glass without glass, not even Philip
Glass. The café is a source of annoyance for visitors
who have to line-up to line-up but the Hot Shop receives much
praise and is the focal point of the musuem in many ways.
Nevertheless, given that glass making has existed for over
three hundred years or more with First Nation work, Spanish
Missions and then the settlers, it would seem logical somehow
that a Museum of Glass should reflect some of that. |
The building
is also listed as the Center for Contemporary Art and that
should probably be what is written on the side of the building
before you pay the entry fee. (A Yorkshireman would understand
this).
The public
space seems under utilised. Just as the Tate Modern didn’t
really know what to do with their empty space in London when they
first opened and it is a pity that more thought hasn’t gone
into what should be in the museum. (You can see Chihuly Bridge
for free and his main body of work is to be found
at 12th and Pacific Avenue at the either the State History Museum
or the new Museum of Art on Pacific Avenue where the Garden of
Glass is the star attraction.) |
The eccentric cane artwork outside the
museum
Photo:© Sam North
(note man in furthest object to gauge actual
size) |
A
building that is so impressive on the exterior should be equally
accessible and appropriate on the inside. Aside from celebrating
Dale Chihuly, Arthur Erikson wanted his museum to contribute to
the rebirth of Tacoma and it might just do that, there was quite
a crowd was there on Saturday.
But I can’t help thinking that although it is good to enable
the redevelopment of the waterfront on Dock Row it would have been
more appropriate to have found an empty Victorian building around
Seventh to Ninth Avenues and built something exciting inside one
of those huge spaces. They could have brought the people to Tacoma,
just as they planned and enabled a recolonisation of the city. Right
now, you can drive down from Seattle or Portland, park, see the
Museum and go home, never even know there’s a city waiting,
desperate to be discovered above Pacific Avenue. |
Go see the Museum of Glass yourself, form your own opinions, but promise
me you’ll visit downtown Tacoma whilst you’re there.See the
new garden of Glass at the new Museum
of Art on Pacific Avenue. Plenty of glass in Antique Row…
You can also visit the Harold le May Classic
Car Museum in Tacoma as well as the History Museum.
Princeton's Chihuly Glass |
And don't forget Tully's Coffee Shop by Antique
Row
Photo © Sam North |
You can visit the Museum Virtually at www.museumofglass.org
©
Sam North
August 2002 (I am sure it has improved with time and is now excellent) Ed. 2021
email: editor@hackwriters.com
See also: Dale
Chihuly- The Emperor of Seattle
Hot
Sweats in a Cold Read at the Anza Club
Fast
Forward life in Vancouver on quicktime
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