History of “The Garage”
The famous studio glass workshops that took place on the grounds of the Toledo
Museum of Art in March and June of 1962 were held in a space commonly referred to
as “the garage”. Harvey Littleton, a pottery instructor, received the support of thenMuseum director Otto Wittmann to conduct a workshop to explore ways artists might
create works from molten glass in their own studios, rather than in factories. Initial
attempts to build a studio furnace and fuse molten glass in the garage failed. It wasn’t
until Dominick Labino, then vice-president and director of research at Johns Manville
Fiber Glass, showed up three days later with glass marbles that melted and furnace
construction advice that the project took off. Harvey Leafgreen, a retired glassblower
from Libbey Glass, was then able to demonstrate his craft to those assembled.
This workshop space was truly a garage, constructed in the 1930s adjacent to the
Museum director’s home on the west side of the Museum campus. The home had
been built in 1910 for the second Museum director, George Stevens, and his wife
Nina and was demolished in 1958 to make room for a cooling system to air condition
the galleries. Parts of the garage remained to house a variety of maintenance
equipment. In the mid 1960s, the Museum enlarged this structure by building its own
boiler plant to replace steam heat that was previously piped in from Toledo Edison.
The final addition came in 1969 when the Glass Crafts building was added. Today,
much of the original garage is gone and what is left is incorporated into these service
buildings. The structure now includes state-of the-art chillers and energy efficient
turbines that maintain the Museum's delicate interior environment.
Toledo Museum of Art
P.O. Box 1013
Toledo, Ohio 43697
419.255.8000
Fax 419.255.5638
www.toledomuseum.org