William Warmus

William Warmus explores how techniques, aesthetics, and narratives emerge and then struggle to find a balance in art and nature. The University of Chicago magazine described him as a classical modernist; The New York Times called him a Stylemaker. He is a Fellow of the Corning Museum of Glass, where he was the curator of modern glass and the founding editor of the museum's annual New Glass Review. Warmus is also an art appraiser, focusing on Tiffany through contemporary art. Son of a Corning Incorporated glassblower, he studied with art critic Harold Rosenberg, art historian Richard Shiff, and philosopher Paul Ricoeur while at the University of Chicago, and has been deeply influenced by Ricoeur's work, especially the three volumes of "Time and Narrative." Warmus is the author of more than a dozen books including biographies of Tiffany, Lalique, and Chihuly (all three published by Abrams), and monographs about Tom Patti, Dan Dailey (Tina Oldknow, co-author) and Frantisek Vizner and Venetian glass. Recent published articles include essays about Italian architect Carlo Scarpa as well as artists Christina Bothwell, Raven Skyriver, Matt Szosz and Narcissus Quagliata, all in Glass Quarterly, and an essay for American Craft magazine about the evolving 21st century aesthetic of craft media. This essay was reprinted in the Utne Reader in Fall 2016 and cited by Webster's Dictionary in its "Word of the Day" column on December 31, 2016. He lectures and teaches widely, ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the World Craft Congress in Vienna, the Smithsonian, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Pilchuck School, and the Museum of Science in Chicago. As advisor to the estate of the art critic Clement Greenberg, Warmus engineered the acquisition by the Portland Art Museum (Oregon) of Greenberg’s collection of Abstract Expressionism, including important artworks by Pollock, Frankenthaler, Caro, Noland and Olitski. He produced a notable photographic record of the selection process, and the video interview he conducted with Greenberg, about aesthetics and philosophy, is in the Getty Archives. At the Corning Museum of Glass (1978-1984) he curated New Glass, Tiffany’s Tiffany, and Emile Galle: Dreams Into Glass, while pursuing an encyclopedic approach that increased the modern glass collection by 1200 artworks, from Tiffany to Wilmarth. He was the editor of Glass magazine, faculty member and visiting artist at the Pilchuck Glass School, and executive secretary of the Glass Art Society.