When I’m traveling, sometimes a need for some minor adapting travels with me. Obstacles do crop up from time to time. Such was the case when I pulled into Tacoma, Washington, a port city of nearly 220,000 about 30 miles south of Seattle.
Tacoma is known for its museums and other cultural attractions, many of them perched on or near the city’s waterfront: the W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory, the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, The Working Waterfront Maritime Museum, The Tacoma Art Museum, and the best known: The Museum of Glass, which features the extraordinary work of Tacoma native and world-famous glass artist Dale Chihuly. I was very excited to see more of his work in person. (I have long enjoyed a large hanging installation in Connecticut at the New Britain Museum of American Art.)
I arrived in Tacoma on a Saturday morning and, uncharacteristically, the Museum of Glass was closed for the day. (It’s usually open all weekend.)
So I wandered, and eventually my wandering deposited me at the Tacoma Art Museum on Pacific Avenue. I paid my admission fee and did some more wandering. I found an exhibit chronicling the truly awful treatment Tacoma’s Chinese immigrants suffered at the hands of the city’s white majority.
In 1885, the mayor ordered all Chinese immigrants to leave the city by Nov. 1. On Nov. 3, a white mob “led” them for miles to a train station, where they were evicted. Several died during the forced exodus. Their homes and businesses were burned the next day.
But my cloud of disappointment at the glass museum being closed came with a silver lining. Wandering on the multiple ramps in the Tacoma Art Museum, I came upon a good-sized room devoted to Chihuly’s tabletop work, including the piece above. I’m sure the modest exhibit pales in comparison with seeing the full glass museum, but there were enough of his non-hanging pieces that I spent an hour viewing them and photographed several (including the one at the top of this post).
Chihuly, now 85 — he shares a Sept. 20 birthday with my daughter Emily — is probably best known for his many chandelier-like installations, each featuring hundreds (at least) of hand-fashioned, colorful, hanging pieces of glass.
All his hanging pieces play on the viewer’s notions of order and color. But his tabletop work is just as whimsical and just as rich in color and shape, on a smaller scale.
Mostly satisfied by my lucky find, I had a late lunch and hit the road, this time headed toward another Pilot truck stop on I-5, where I bought diesel at a discount (with my Pilot card), parked, and spent a pleasant night in my van listening to music.
