The glass house the Palleys helped build sparkles with an abundance of natural light filling the wing designed by Roney J. Mateu, B.Arch ’76, of Mateu Architecture, Inc.

Few art museums in the world have a glass collection at all, let alone one as comprehensive as the one you’ll find in the Lowe Art Museum’s newly opened Myrna and Sheldon Palley Pavilion for Contemporary Glass and Studio Arts. It gives the Lowe “a real leg up,” says William Carlson, an endowed professor and head of the Department of Art and Art History’s ceramics, glass, and sculpture program. Carlson is also a well-known glass artist whom the Palleys were instrumental in bringing to the University.

Open since May, the Pavilion’s 3,500 square feet of display space comprise four gallery areas and 113 pieces of modern art, including loans and museum holdings of glass, ceramics, and fiber by noted masters such as Dale Chihuly, Jun Kaneko, and William Morris, to name a few of the approximately 50 artists represented.

Longtime UM supporters and art collectors, Myrna, B.B.A. ’56, and Sheldon Palley, B.B.A. ’56, J.D. ’57, gave $1.7 million to the Lowe to support construction of its first addition in 12 years, funded a million-dollar endowment for future programming in the pavilion, and donated around 100 pieces from their extens­­­ive private collection.

The permanent collection will rotate, Myrna Palley explains. She and her husband have been collecting singular pieces of glass art since the 1970s. Pat and Larry Stewart, Florence and Robert Werner, Beaux Arts, Joan Baxt, Bernie Bercuson, and Judi Matus and family also contributed funds and artwork.

The Lowe has considered glass a fine art “since the 1950s,” says Brian Dursum, the museum’s director.

Much more than just pretty vases, the exhibition’s contemporary works push the boundaries and expectations of the medium. Morris’s tribal installation gives way to Robert Arneson’s playful sculpture Nasal Flat, neighbor to Therman Statom’s painting-like Untitled (Box With Queen of Clubs). In another area, Lucio Bubacco’s Bosch-inspired lampwork scenes Creature Cry Bottle and Horsehead nestle next to pottery-and-glaze plates by Picasso, set off by a giant textile wall-hanging by Ken Uyemura, all of which mingle with work by Carlson and senior lecturer Bonnie Seeman, B.F.A. ’91. Virginia-based glass sculptor Elizabeth Mears will add a large installation this fall, Dursum says.

“It’s fantastic to know these artists and have a relationship with them,” says Myrna Palley. “When you look at a piece of glass, the vision of the artist comes through—and the personality. In this collection, the artists are vital; they continue to teach.”