Luke Jerram's two glass models of the Smallpox Virus and HIV were commissioned by The Corning Museum of Glass and unveiled last week.
After a public lecture by Luke Jerram at the annual Seminar on Glass at The Corning Museum of Glass, the British artist’s two commissioned works Smallpox Virus and HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) (2010) were officially unveiled on October 15, 2010. Since 1986, the Rakow Commission has been awarded to artists who were not already in the museum collection. The program was designed to encourage emerging artists, and those new to glass, to get involved in this material, and to bolster the museum’s permanent collection. This year marks the 25th year since museum benefactors the late Dr. and Mrs. Leonard S. Rakow established the commission.Jerram’s work, first covered on the blog in 2009, generated newspaper headlines when it was shown at New York’s Heller Gallery and some questioned whether it was idealizing the deadly viruses it depicted, making them more beautiful than they would, in fact, appear, if magnified to the degree they are in the flameworked sculptures.
Chosen by Corning curator of modern glass Tina Oldknow, the work’s linking of art and science were cited as their key aspect that made them relevant to this museum in particular.“I nominated Luke Jerram for the 2010 Rakow Commission because I wanted to mark the Museum’s 25th Commission with an artwork that made reference to art history and to science,” Oldknow writes in a prepared statement. “These two fields of inquiry have constituted the intellectual core of operations at the Museum since its opening in 1951, almost 60 years ago.”
Andrew Page on Glass 