Corning Museum of Glass

The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, showcases over 50,000 glass objects spanning 3,500 years, offering live demonstrations and interactive exhibits.

Planning your visit

The Corning Museum of Glass holds over 50,000 objects spanning 3,500 years — the most comprehensive glass collection in the world — running from Egyptian and Roman vessels through Islamic and Venetian work to contemporary studio glass and monumental installations by artists including Chihuly.

What makes it exceptional is that it is not only a collection. Live hot-glass demonstrations run throughout the day, with gaffers gathering, blowing and shaping molten glass in front of an audience while narrating what they are doing and why it might fail — this is the single best explanation of the material anywhere. Visitors can also book Make Your Own Glass sessions and produce an object themselves.

The science and technology galleries cover optical glass, fibre optics, and the industrial research that Corning built its business on, including the glass that made television and modern telecommunications possible.

It sits in upstate New York in the Finger Lakes region, several hours from any major city, so most visitors come as part of a wider trip.

Bookable options include admission and multi-day tour formats combining Corning with the Finger Lakes and Niagara Falls. Current availability is listed below.