Artist

Dale Chihuly

born Tacoma, WA 1941
Media - portrait_image_113705.jpg - 90398
Courtesy Dale Chihuly.
Also known as
  • Dale Patrick Chihuly
Born
Tacoma, Washington, United States
Active in
  • Seattle, Washington, United States
Biography

Born in Tacoma, Washington, Dale Chihuly studied with Harvey Littleton, founder of the studio glass movement, at the University of Wisconsin and received an M.F.A. degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1968. Chihuly was a co-founder of the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington, and is former director of the glass program at the Rhode Island School of Design. He currently works in Seattle, where he collaborates with and directs a team of glassblowers to produce his signature chandeliers, sea forms, baskets, and cylinders.

Among his many honors are the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 1967 and a Fulbright fellowship to Murano, Italy, in 1968. In 1993 Chihuly designed stage sets for the Seattle Opera Companys production of Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande. In another site-specific installation, Chihuly traveled to Italy to display his massive chandeliers over Venetian canals in a 1996 exhibition entitled Chihuly Over Venice.

Kenneth R. Trapp and Howard Risatti Skilled Work: American Craft in the Renwick Gallery (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998)

Works by this artist (14 items)

Dale Chihuly, Untitled (Glass Vessel), 1979, glass, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Diane and Sandy Besser, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2001.71.1, © 1978, Chihuly, Inc.
Untitled (Glass Vessel)
Date1979
glass
On view
Dale Chihuly, Cobalt and Gold Leaf Venetian, 1993, blown glass with surface ornamentation, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Elmerina and Paul Parkman, 1999.89.2
Cobalt and Gold Leaf Venetian
Date1993
blown glass with surface ornamentation
Not on view

Videos

Exhibitions

Media - 2016.11 - SAAM-2016.11_6 - 124929
Connections: Contemporary Craft at the Renwick Gallery
November 13, 2015March 6, 2022
Connections is the Renwick Gallery’s dynamic ongoing permanent collection presentation, featuring more than 80 objects celebrating craft as a discipline and an approach to living differently in the modern world.