Where Rivers Meet Glass: Maya Lin’s Marble Installation Flows Into the Corning Museum of Glass

Source: Corning Museum of Glass

Reported By: Matthew Kennedy

This fall, the Corning Museum of Glass will unveil a powerful new commission from world-renowned artist and architect Maya Lin, marking the 10th anniversary of the museum’s Contemporary Art + Design Galleries. Opening to the public on October 11, 2025, the as-yet-untitled piece continues Lin’s celebrated Marble River Drawing series—this time tracing the unique topography of the Chemung, Tioga, Cohocton, and Canisteo rivers that shape the Corning region.

Constructed from #475 Johns Mansville glass marbles, the installation responds to both the local landscape and Lin’s personal history. It will stretch across the floor of the Thomas Phifer–designed gallery, its reflective currents echoing the movement of the rivers that once carried glassworks from Brooklyn to Corning in 1868. The piece is commissioned through the museum’s Ennion Acquisitions Fund, a philanthropic initiative that supports major contemporary glass acquisitions and is backed by CMoG’s dedicated Ennion members.

Far more than an elegant homage to local geography, the installation channels Lin’s enduring fascination with interconnected systems—both environmental and emotional. “Waterways have a kind of magic—we rarely see them as unified systems. Instead, we tend to focus on the stretch of river we know. But when you step back and take in the whole, these living systems reveal themselves as singular, interconnected entities, each with its own personality,” said Lin. “That’s the essence of what waterways truly are.”

The artist’s choice of material is just as significant as the subject. Lin recalls being captivated as a child by a box of clear glass marbles brought home by her father, Henry Huan Lin, a ceramicist and an early advocate for the studio glass movement. “It was like opening a box of water,” she remembered, marveling at how light refracted through the marbles. Decades later, that same sense of wonder returns in her Corning commission, which uses the inherent luminosity of glass to convey the quiet dynamism of flowing water.

This commission is the latest evolution of Lin’s multidisciplinary practice, which first captured national attention with her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Since then, she has continuously blurred boundaries between sculpture, architecture, and environmental activism, with works housed in permanent collections at the MoMA, The Met, the Smithsonian, and the National Gallery of Art, among others.

At Corning, the installation responds directly to the clean lines and contemplative geometry of the Contemporary Art + Design Wing, opened in 2015 and designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners. For Tami Landis, Curator of Postwar and Contemporary Glass at CMoG, the pairing between artist and space was both natural and deliberate. “Lin’s marble river drawings are incredibly meaningful for how they activate site and space to the local environment, while also being responsive to the wider emotional and social conditions of humanity,” Landis noted. “This dynamic work connects directly to our landscape and celebrates the diverse range of artistic approaches to glass today.”

The unveiling of Lin’s work punctuates a decade of forward-thinking curation at CMoG’s Contemporary Art + Design Galleries. Funded by the Ennion Acquisitions Fund, the piece joins a growing portfolio of groundbreaking works that reflect glass’s expansive potential as both a material and a medium for social commentary.

A private preview event on October 9 will introduce the piece to Ennion supporters, with the artist herself in attendance to reflect on the work’s inspiration and creation. For visitors and collectors alike, the commission is a rare opportunity to witness how the elements of place, memory, material, and movement can converge so precisely—and so poetically.