News

We congratulate Patricia Kaersenhout, Artist and Activist, who is The Best Artist of the Year.
The glass for her work "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner Too" was made at the VRIJ GLAS Studios by our Gaffers Anthony Schäfermayer and Richard Price.
Link to NRC: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/12/17/dit-is-de-beste-beeldende-kunst-van-2019-a3984127
Link to an interview with Kaersenhout in De Appel: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/10/09/patricia-kaersenhout-het-enige-wat-ik-wil-is-het-verhaal-iets-completer-maken-a3976122
Kaersenhout's installation was exhibited at De Appel in Amsterdam.

Previously we have also made the Obsidian glass for Studio Drift, which was featured in Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. And, many other fine projects, like Oscar Santillan's project 'Solaris' for which we melted sand from the Atacama Desert and made lenses that in turn were used to photograph the same dessert. We also taught Anthon Beeke to gather hot glass from the furnace, a skill he used to make glass letters for his 'Sperm Alphabet'. Previously, we also made 'The Chinese Wall' in glass for Marina Abramovic and Ulay's travelling exhibition 'Love', which started in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Venetian parts in the authentic colours for 17th century chandeliers in the Dutch castle Kasteel Keukenhof. Cast solid optical elements, in the original Champagne yellow colour, for Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (today Kunstmuseum Den Haag). We also made 196 specially designed angled glass lenses for Peter Struycken's fountain at Spuiplein in The Hague.
Our studios are a unique and continuous resource for artists seeking to complete ambitious projects in glass.

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The Sybren Valkema Archive
Anna Carlgren, who is the founder of the VRIJ GLAS Foundation, has since 2009 worked tirelessly to secure funding for the conservation, digitalization, and preservation of the Archive. A first start-up grant she received from the Swedish Ministry of Culture to find solid partners for the in-depth dissemination of the material. Soon after was The Corning Museum of Glass in New York, and the Royal Library in The Hague were added to the project as contributing partners.

Additional NWO Creative Industries funding
For further dissemination of The Sybren Valkema Archive after the digitalization, funding was grated by NWO, the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research, in December 2017, where the Archive is the core of a larger project to integrate art technical information in a permanent database. A collaboration between The VRIJ GLAS Foundation, Utrecht University, University of Amsterdam, and RKD-Netherlands Institute for Art History. In 2018, we could begin investigating the material further, focusing on the questions of how historical sources were used to innovate glass production and education in the twentieth century, and how we efficiently can link the enormous amount of digitized art technical sources on artistic glass production. For this last face, the project has employed Anna Carlgren as a PhD Researcher.

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