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Chrysler Museum of Art Hosts the World Premiere of
William Morris' Latest Creations
June 28 through January 5, 2003
Norfolk Southern Large Changing Galleries

Click here to enter a special web site about the exhibition
William Morris: Two Installations

William Morris, one of the most talented and daring glass artists in the world today and one of the three artists in Chrysler Museum of Art's 1999 Hot Glass, Flat Glass, and Neon, has selected the Museum to host the world premiere of his newest creations. The exhibition, William Morris: Two Installations, is sponsored by the Museum's Masterpiece Society and will run through January 5, 2003.

Artist William Morris is a master of technique-creating both blown glass and glass sculpture-and has employed them in the formation of the extraordinary vessels and figures that comprise the two installations premiering at the Chrysler--Man Adorned and Cinerary Urns. These works speak to universal values-to both the diversity and brotherhood of mankind, and to the memory of those who have been here before us. They speak to the very sacredness of life itself.

For the sculptures that make up the installation Man Adorned, William Morris has worked the medium on a grand scale with some of the figures reaching over seven-feet tall. Like the ancient Greeks, William Morris incorporates color into his works. He does not use paint as they did, but rather introduces the color by rolling clear molten glass in powdered colored glass. Drawing on the rich cultural heritage of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, Man Adorned emphasizes body ornament in all of its manifestations-jewelry, dress, and even tattoo.

The second installation, Cinerary Urns, strikes a more somber note while reminding us of the ephemeral nature of life. Cinerary urns are vessels that are intended to house the cremated remains of the dead. The ancient Romans were the first to fashion them from glass. Morris's Cinerary Urns arose from the artist's personal grief at the death of his mother last July. This event was for him "the first in a continuum of seeming tragedies" both close to home, with the deaths of friends and mentors, and then escalating to include the events of the nation on September 11, 2001.

William Morris (American, b. 1957)
Cinerary Urns, 2002
Courtesy of William Morris Studio
Photo: Rob Vinnedge

Seventy richly colored and textured urns with beautifully crafted fiber ties are arranged in niches within an eleven-feet high, twenty-feet square freestanding structure, suggesting a columbarium or tomb. They are a requiem in glass to the victims of September 11.

At the conclusion of William Morris: Two Installations Norfolk premier, Morris's Cinerary Urns will travel to New York City where it will be shown at the American Craft Museum from January 17 through June 2003.

Click here to enter a special web site about the exhibition
William Morris: Two Installations

For More Information or Images Please Contact the Chrysler at (757) 664-6200 or museum@chrysler.org

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