Revisiting Chihuly at the de Young

When the former Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), John Buchanan, approached Chihuly in 2006 about developing a project together, an exhibition exploring his relationship to both tradition and innovation throughout 40 years of work began to take shape. 2008’s Chihuly at the de Young would be his largest and most comprehensive exhibition to that date, as well as his first in San Francisco.

FAMSF encompasses two locations: The de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor, giving Chihuly the opportunity to design one exhibition in two parts: 11 galleries at the de Young Museum and three installations at the Legion of Honor.

In front of the de Young Museum stood Saffron Tower (2008), a 30-foot-tall column of bright yellow neon tubes. Inside the museum’s 11 galleries, Chihuly and Curator Timothy Anglin Burgard worked together to present a comprehensive survey of the past 40 years of Chihuly’s work. The exhibition highlighted early and new concepts.

For the first time ever, Chihuly revisited experimental neon works from his early career: Glass Forest #1 and Glass Forest #2, a 1971–72 collaboration with artist James Carpenter. The works feature hundreds of tall, tapering milk glass stalks illuminated with mercury and argon. Glass Forest #1 was presented at The American Craft Museum in New York City, while Glass Forest #2 was presented at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, and later Museum Bellerive in Zurich. Chihuly created Glass Forest #3 (2008), a new, site-specific installation for the de Young in shades of salmon and bright white. It revisited these earlier works that helped propel glass as a medium into the avant garde.

The exhibition was also the public debut of Chihuly Black, a series of Cylinders and Baskets in opaque black glass with jewel-like accents of brilliant colors, creating, as critic Barbara Rose said, “an inner glow, rather than reflecting or transmitting light like a prism.” The series inspired a new collection of Burned Drawings, works on paper that integrated fire as a drawing medium.

The Legion of Honor installations offered a compelling exploration of Chihuly’s instincts around space and traditional architecture. Within its indoor and open-air spaces, he presented two sculptures—including The Sun (2003), which stood opposite a bronze of Rodin’s The Thinker. On view for nearly three months ahead of the official exhibition opening, the contrast between the organic, expressive qualities of Chihuly’s sculptures alongside the restraint of their neoclassical surroundings made for a fascinating juxtaposition.

Between the creation of Glass Forest #1 and the debut of Chihuly Black, Chihuly had spent nearly 40 years creating a broad, diverse body of work, one that was comprehensively represented in this exhibition. Nearly 400,000 visitors experienced Mille Fiori, Venetians, Ikebana, Drawings, Chandeliers, Towers, Persians, Macchia, and more, making for what Buchanan noted as “the largest-attended exhibition ever at the de Young Museum,” as of 2008.

The exhibition is the subject of Chihuly: Fire and Light, a documentary following Chihuly’s process of developing the exhibition. It features behind-the-scenes hotshop footage, as well as commentary from Buchanan; Thomas Hoving, former director of the metropolitan Museum of Art; and Jack Lenor Larsen, designer and founder of LongHouse Reserve. Together they discuss what the exhibition—and Chihuly himself—bring to contemporary art.

Watch Chihuly: Fire and Light on PBS.

“Chihuly the Artist: Breathing Life into Glass” by curator Timothy Anglin Burgard
“Black is the Color” by critic Barbara Rose