The Corning museum has a $53 million annual budget, almost three-quarters of it contributed by the glassmaking company. CreditGary Hodges

For decades, travelers have made their way to the Corning Museum of Glass to view all the ways that light can sparkle and shimmer.The museum in this rural Finger Lakes town, which began as what the company called a gift to the community for its 100th anniversary, opened in 1951 with a modest footprint. In the years since, the museum has earned world renown, with a collection of nearly 50,000 pieces of glass art, some dating from 1500 B.C.

On the back of its success, the museum has undergone three major expansions. But despite those enhancements, it is again on the verge of exceeding itself as a glass showcase.It is adding another wing, scheduled to open in March. The 100,000-square-foot addition, which cost $64 million, is almost certain to be globally recognized as a light-gathering glass masterpiece itself.Designed by the New York architect Thomas Phifer, and in the final months of fit and finish, the new wing is clad in panels of white glass, adorned with a 150-foot-long window and suffused with a roof-spanning skylight that will inundate big contemporary glass pieces with cascades of natural light......Continue Reading

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