Thursday, October 18, 2012

First off, I’ll be traveling the high seas the next couple of weeks. So, your Gazette may be more sporadic.

Now a response from David Goldstein to Bob Mueller’s request for rallying around the Building “B” collection.

A NEW ROCKWELL BUILDING?

I appreciate and share the sentiments and wishes expressed by Bob Mueller with respect to both Bob Rockwell and the Rockwell Collection of Carder Steuben. However, the idea of a new building to house the Rockwell Carder Collection has been explored previously and found impractical and unworkable.

In 2000 when the conversion of the Rockwell Museum began, Bobby Rockwell and I looked into buying a vacant building in downtown Corning. While we could fund the purchase and required renovations, we could not come close to developing a workable operating budget. Insurance, utilities, maintenance and staffing costs would exceed by far any realistic income projection.

There also were and still would be major issues with respect to obtaining the collection to exhibit. Most of the great pieces were gifted to the Rockwell Museum by Bob and Hertha Rockwell over a period of years and are the property of the museum. While Bob owned and Bobby still owns a great deal of Carder Steuben, those holdings do not come close to matching the Rockwell Museum’s collection.

The Rockwell Museum collection also includes many gifts and bequests that were made over the years by others, including the Reifschlager Collection and donations from the Friends of Carder and its members.

The Rockwell museum has a long-term loan agreement with CMoG which covers most of the Carder Steuben on display in B Building and in the windows on Market Street. Those exhibits also include pieces from the CMoG collection that were not previously displayed at the Rockwell Museum.

The bottom line is that even if a building could be bought or built for the Rockwell Collection, it would be difficult to obtain the collection to display in it, and even harder to fund its continuing operation.

David Goldstein

President

Quick results to the request for materials for the Rakow Library by Scott Hansen.

The Power of the Internet

Less than one hour after my request for a copy of “Play of Light – The Glass Lamps of Frederick Carder” for the Rakow Library appeared in the Gazette this morning, a Corning resident delivered a copy to the Library. A gap in their preservation copy collection has been filled. Thank you to the Corning resident who delivered the copy to the Library and to the two other individuals who offered copies to me.

Scott Hansen

Then Gerry Eggert had a question about the modern Steuben Georgia O’keefe plates. It was answered and now Gerry has another.

Alan,

How many plates designed by Georgia O’Keefe were produced? Do other museums have copies?

Gerry

We wrap up our John Styler pictures with this one of the crowd at the Corning Country Club for the Carder birthday party.

www.cardersteubenclub.org

Any opinions expressed by participants to the Gazette e-mail newsletters are the opinions of the authors and are not endorsed by or the opinions of the Carder Steuben Club.

2013 Carder Steuben Club annual Symposium will be held at The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY from September 19-21, 2013. The festivities will begin with Frederick Carder’s 150th birthday celebration on the evening of September 18, 2013.