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A new art museum with a focus on studio glassblowing is now open in Shoreview.

The Cafesjian Art Trust opened on Oct. 13, with its inaugural exhibition focusing on noted glass artist Dale Chihuly. Admission is free, but timed reservations need to be made in advance online. The museum’s exhibitions are viewable only through guided tours, which take place at 10 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m. every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

With its glossy blue and gray paneling, the museum building’s exterior is striking and whimsical amid the surrounding suburban white- and red-brick architecture. Stepping inside feels transportive, too: The entranceway is reminiscent of a tunnel, with bands of light running along the arched ceiling. The interior space is bright and colorful, just like the lobby’s centerpiece chandelier, a permanent floor-to-ceiling glass sunburst by Chihuly.

The museum is named for the late philanthropist, art collector and publishing executive Gerard Cafesjian, who also lent his name to a restored 1914 carousel in Como Park Zoo & Conservatory and an art musuem in Yerevan, Armenia. Cafesjian was particularly interested in glass art, and his longtime personal and professional friendship with Chihuly underlies the museum’s inaugural exhibition, “A Lasting Friendship: Gerard Cafesjian & Dale Chihuly.”

Cafesjian’s daughter Kathie Cafesjian Baradaran, who is now the trustee of the museum, said the museum aims to disentangle studio glass from “decorative art” — which also holds a place in their collection, she said — and establish its place among fine art media like oil paint or bronze sculpture.

The museum isn’t all glass, though, Baradaran said. Cafesjian, who died in 2013, amassed one of the world’s largest collections of art by Armenian painter Arshile Gorky, as well as works by other contemporary artists including Sam Francis, Gerhard Richter, Jennifer Bartlett and others. The museum’s second exhibition, which will run from April 8 to Oct. 18, 2023, focuses on the highlights of the Cafesjian collection, and a planned third exhibition will explore optical art through works by Victor Vasarely and Jon Kuhn.

Curator and executive director Andy Schlauch has spent a significant portion of his recent career working with Chihuly and his large-scale glass art. For the current show, Schlauch arranged the gallery in a chronological loop through the artist’s career, from asymmetrical seaforms to a wall-length installation of Persian floral forms to more ornate Venetian-inspired vessels.

“These are incredibly complicated pieces to make,” Schlauch said. Each work could involve up to 20 glassblowers working across several days. “In my head, I’m thinking not just how to celebrate the artwork, but how to celebrate their work and their talent and ability to interpret Dale’s vision for what he likes to see in his work.”

Cafesjian and Chihuly met in the mid-1980s, Schlauch said, following a period in which Chihuly navigated changes in his artistic process. After a car accident that damaged his vision and led to his trademark eye patch, Chihuly stopped handling hot glass himself. He took on more of a directorial role, leading teams of glassblowers to create the monumental works he became known for.

“There’s still that romantic notion of the artist working hard, away by themselves in the studio,” Schlauch said. “It’s actually a very old-fashioned approach to making art; you had Rembrandt and Da Vinci who had massive studios, and people to help them achieve what they wanted to create. That’s very similar to how glass artists work.”

Several of the collection’s most stunning Chihuly works were made specifically for Cafesjian. In one painted sketch on display, the words “Cafesjian Chandelier” flank a spiral staircase surrounding the very same sunburst chandelier now in the museum’s lobby. The museum’s pergola ceiling, an overhead installation of colorful sculptural glass forms lit from above — similar to Chihuly’s much larger work in the Bellagio in Las Vegas — was originally placed above Cafesjian’s home dining table. The museum’s collection also includes dinner plates and napkins Chihuly doodled on during dinners at Cafesjian’s home as well as personal letters between the two men.

Now in the museum, the dining table ceiling is permanently installed in its own room, an echoey but contemplative space where the lighting throws colorful shadows on the walls. Schlauch said it’s a special opportunity “to be able to bring it out of storage and create a room with it, so people who come through can get that otherworldly experience.”

The vibrant museum facility also includes an event space, an extensive warehouse, and a uniquely egg-shaped research library. There, in addition to curating books on all artists in the collection, staff will work to collect oral histories of influential contemporary artists.

“[In] studio glass, we’re getting to the time where Dale [Chihuly] is 81; we’ve already lost Harvey Littleton and Benjamin Moore,” Schlauch said, referring to two renowned glass artists. “It would be great if we could become another resource for people.”

For the studio glass movement, a museum in the Midwest is a homecoming of sorts, Schlauch said. The artist Harvey Littleton pioneered glass art from his studio at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where Chihuly was one of his early students. Today, many big players are on the coasts, from Chihuly’s Pilchuck Glass School in Washington to the influential Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York. But with local studios like Potekglass, Foci Minnesota Center for Glass Arts, and more — and now the Cafesjian Art Trust — Schlauch said the Twin Cities is establishing a presence in the studio glass world.

“It’s been really cool to connect with the museums in this region, and also there are museums that have large glass collections around the country, and we’re part of this family,” Schlauch said. “They’re super excited to see another great glass collection coming to the public, too.”

Cafesjian Art Trust: 4600 Churchill St., Shoreview; 612-359-8991; make reservations online at cafesjianarttrust.org/

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