Glass: Sand, Ash, Heat. New Orleans Museum of Art

This elegant volume highlights human connection through glass, a material that embodies a rich historical exchange between technology and the arts. The New Orleans Museum of Art holds one of the nation’s finest and most extraordinary collections of glass, with nearly 5,000 works ranging from tiny ancient Egyptian amulets to large-scale contemporary works of conceptual sculpture, and including nearly every moment of glass expression between.This sumptuously illustrated publication presents an openness to different avenues of understanding and interpreting these works of art, bringing together essays by museum curators and conservators, as well as a glass artist, a foodways historian, a laboratory scientist, and a New Orleans Black Masking Mardi Gras Indian. The story of glass as presented in Glass: Sand, Ash, Heat is one of scientific achievement, worldwide trade in objects and ideas, and, always, beautiful artistic expression. It is published to celebrate a special exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Mel Buchanan is the RosaMary Curator of Decorative Arts & Design at the New Orleans Museum of Art.