National Liberty Museum

This guide to the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia follows a divide in the world of glass art: for most of the twentieth century, artists who blew glass into pipes rather than vases were treated as craftsmen, not artists. It traces the museum's 2017 exhibition confronting that divide, alongside the story of founder Irvin Borowsky, a magazine publisher who discovered the Studio Glass movement in 1990 and commissioned Dale Chihuly's twenty-foot Flame of Liberty for the entry hall. You'll hear why Borowsky chose glass, of all materials, to anchor a museum about liberty. Look up as you step into the entry hall.