Glass and institutions

I just got home from the opening of an interesting glass & design exhibition at the MUDAC in Lausanne (http://www.mudac.ch/exhibitions/currently-showing/). It displays the work of two designers without any glass background who've had the opportunity from using glass as a media through the medium of a French institution I did not know about... much to my shame.

It is true that the CIRVA in Marseilles (http://www.cirva.fr/accueil.html) has been kept rather out of the public eye since it's opening in the 1980's because it's purpose is not to provide public exhibition space but rather to provide artists and designers who know nothing about glass with an opportunity to work in that area through the collaboration of an expert team of glass workers. It operates on a long residency basis. What's surprised me most about it is that it is a public-funded facility. There are not that many institutions in France that promote glass and I think this is a very interesting way of doing it, a lucky product of the dynamism (I was going to say pushiness) of the French minister of culture at the time, who enabled funding of many grand projects, some more inspired than others. Good to see that some was energy was channeled into glass !