New Installation and Curated Exhibition at the Museum of American Glass until Dec. 2026
August 11, 2026
The Museum of American Glass in Millville, New Jersey presents an exhibition of a new site specific installation by Jocelyne Prince Ghost Optics (April 2, 2026 through December 31, 2026). Concurrently, the Museum presents Portals and Passages a group exhibition curated by Prince. Closing Event: November 7, 2026 from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Ghost Optics is a site-specific intervention integrated in the windows of the Museum’s Bottle Gallery. It addresses early methods of flat glass and bottle glass production. Working with the 120 year old Paul Wissmach Glass Company in West Virginia, Prince hot cast various interchangeable emblems from a historic flask mould for spirits that used an industrial technology known as the “American System”, which allowed one mould to be used to make a multitude of bottle designs. These were then passed through an industrial roller to create a series of flat glass sheets, which ware installed in the windows of the Museum’s Bottle Gallery. The emblems evoke a mix of patriotic, historic and commemorative motifs. They are stretched, crackled, and sometimes even fractured. Their ghost-like watermark characteristic becomes visible at certain angles and invisible at other angles. This material process mirrors how we test our patriotism and democracy, challenging its limits, and sometimes going beyond. (MAG Webpage: PDF / link)
Portals and Passages brings together five artists: Justin Ginsberg, Romina Gonzales, Ashley Raye Harris, Matthew Day Perez and Alexander Wenstrup, who have an acute understanding of how just a few millimeters of glass can shift our perception of the world. Each work in this exhibition catalyzes the optical and sculptural space that exists within a sheet of glass. In some cases, the surface of the glass has been disrupted, or bears the marks of the action of its making, or the glass composition has been specially concocted to refract light, or the tiniest amount of air is trapped and visually manifested. A fascination with surface, the space just beyond the surface, what we see through the glass, the space within the glass, and what we see reflected in the glass preoccupies these artists. (MAG webpage: PDF / link)
The works in this exhibition have been selected in conjunction with, and as a complement to the research and activities that are part of the November 2026 WheatonArts symposium on window glass production methods, “Transparent Thresholds.” (more info)