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Dale Chihuly | Fact Sheet

Fact Sheet: Dale Chihuly

  • Artist Dale Chihuly, born in 1941, lives and works in Seattle.
  • He received a BA from the University of Washington (1965), an MS from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1967), and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) (1968).
  • In 1969, he established the glass program at RISD, where he taught full-time for more than a decade.
  • He cofounded Pilchuck Glass School near Stanwood, Washington, in 1971.
  • His series of works include Baskets, Chandeliers, Cylinders, Drawings, Fiori, Glass on Glass, Ikebana, Macchia, Niijima Floats, Persians, Putti, Rotolo, Seaforms, Soft Cylinders, Towers, and Venetians.
  • Major exhibitions include:
    • Chihuly Over Venice (1995–96), for which he created sculptures at glass factories in Finland, Ireland,
    • and Mexico and installed them over the canals and piazzas of Venice.
    • Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem (1999–2000), an exhibition of sculptures within an ancient fortress, now the Tower of David Museum of the History of Jerusalem.
    • Garden Cycle (2001–present)—Chihuly’s lifelong fascination for glasshouses developed into a series of exhibitions within botanical settings. His Garden Cycle began in 2001 at Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago. Chihuly also exhibited at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, in 2005 and 2019; at Gardens by the Bay, Singapore, in 2021; and at more than ten sites in the United States, including the New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, in 2006 and 2017.
    • The de Young Museum, San Francisco, 2008.
    • The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2011.
    • Chihuly Garden and Glass, Seattle, 2012 (long-term exhibition).
    • Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 2012.
    • Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2013.
    • Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 2016.
    • Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2017.
    • Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands, 2018.
  • Chihuly’s work has been exhibited in more than 240 museums, including the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
  • Chihuly’s work is included in more than 200 museum collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. Extensive collections are held by the Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington; the Oklahoma City Museum of Art; the Morean Arts Center, St. Petersburg, Florida; the Franklin Park Conservatory, Columbus, Ohio; Toyama Glass Art Museum, Toyama, Japan; and the Daiichi Museum, Nagoya, Japan.
  • He has been awarded thirteen honorary doctoral degrees, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (1967), a Fulbright Fellowship (1968), and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1975, 1979)